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Post by hireton on Aug 16, 2022 19:41:29 GMT
So no parliamentary democratic route to a second Scottish independence from the Tories:
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domjg
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Post by domjg on Aug 16, 2022 19:50:01 GMT
Another right wing populist trashing the conventions of government - www.theguardian.com/australia-news/2022/aug/16/former-australian-prime-minister-scott-morrison-pm-secretly-gave-himself-five-ministerial-rolesIt seems incredible, but Morrison declared himself as minister for five separate portfolios while PM, without the public ever knowing, and - quite incredibly - without many of the ministers in those departments ever being told. From Brazil, to the US, Australia and the good old United Kingdom, we've all been given a lesson in the dangers the right wing pose to democracy. The Conservatives have declined to learn the lesson here, and are prepared to go deeper into this cesspit. We can but hope that circumstances deny them the opportunity to con enough of the electorate to win power again, for the sake of the country. It looks like some US Republicans are moving even further down the dark path, talking less of the 'stolen election' and beginning to openly play with being against democracy and majority rule if demographics go against them. 'We are a Republic not a democracy' is apparently a new rallying cry to some who appear to seek an Apartheid where self-defined 'real Americans' get to lord it over everyone else. Scary stuff: www.nytimes.com/2022/08/15/magazine/arizona-republicans-democracy.html?searchResultPosition=1
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domjg
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Post by domjg on Aug 16, 2022 19:54:34 GMT
Truss rejects Labour's plan - which, rightly or wrongly, is wildly popular - and insists on tax cuts instead which no one thinks will help the poorest. It is as if Labour have set a very obvious trap and she's charged straight into it. Zero political antennae. I think if I was a Tory MP I would be in a state of panic about her becoming PM. "She said: We’re still in the leadership contest at the moment. Now, my priority is reducing taxes so people can keep more of their own money at the same time as making sure we boost energy supply. It is wrong to just keep sticking plasters on this problem. What we actually need to do is make sure we are unleashing more energy, for example, from the North Sea. We’re investing in technologies like nuclear, and we’re finding more renewable energy as well." This situation is perfect for Labour and they've managed to seize the moment with common sense ideas that the public will respond to at a time when our actual PM is mute and the contenders are unable to pivot themselves to reality and the wider electorate due to the painfully ongoing need to court the deeply unrepresentative and skewed attitudes of the Tory party membership (though in Truss' case it seems she might actually mean it) It makes for a wonderful juxtaposition of reality and fantasy that it seems even Tory voters are recognising.
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Post by robbiealive on Aug 16, 2022 20:02:48 GMT
PS. We are told that a £30 billlion fix on winter fuel costs would, if it recurred, add up to v big bill. But Truss's £30 Billion in tax cuts would be a recurring loss of governemnt income, another v big bill expressed in a different form. The counter-argument is that tax cuts give people a choice of how to spend a greater disposable income & they create economic growth by stimulating demand for goods & services &, more vaguely, by stimulating individual enterprise. But everybody spends money on gas &/or electricity. Hence a fix has the same effects on disposable income & demand as tax cuts; esp among lower-income households, who spend a higher proportion of their incomes on energy, & thus gain more % of disposable income from the fix, even if their absolute spend on energy is lower than among the better-off. One difference would be that tax cuts are seldom if ever reversed, while energy subsidies could be indexed or phased out as prices fell: plius the admin cosats of a fix are v low. I know little about the economics of tax & fiscal policy & there may be something horribly wrong in virtually equating £30 billion of (untargeted) fix & (untargeted) tax cuts aimed at individuals & households.
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Post by RAF on Aug 16, 2022 20:07:46 GMT
So no parliamentary democratic route to a second Scottish independence from the Tories: We'll see about that. If, say, opinion polls put support for Indy at 60-65%+ he may find it very difficult to hold back the tide. All it would need is for SLAB or the Scottish Tories to back Indy (which in time they may well do) and the game is up.
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domjg
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Post by domjg on Aug 16, 2022 20:14:59 GMT
It made me feel a bit nauseous, as it would most decent folk I'd imagine including my parents whose political views are/were very different to mine. Humour in the world renowned English 'oh come on, it's just a joke' mould.
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Post by graham on Aug 16, 2022 20:23:56 GMT
So no parliamentary democratic route to a second Scottish independence from the Tories: It rather depends on what he means. I am strongly opposed to a second Referendum in the near term , but post 2035 I see no grounds for blocking it if Scotland wants another vote.
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steve
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Post by steve on Aug 16, 2022 20:39:04 GMT
Sunak and Truss rule out freezing energy prices at leadership hustings
These muppets have committed electoral suicide but apparently want to impoverish millions in the mean time.
Lowest of the low.
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Post by hireton on Aug 16, 2022 20:39:16 GMT
So no parliamentary democratic route to a second Scottish independence from the Tories: We'll see about that. If, say, opinion polls put support for Indy at 60-65%+ he may find it very difficult to hold back the tide. All it would need is for SLAB or the Scottish Tories to back Indy (which in time they may well do) and the game is up. Yes so Btitish nationalists in Westminster will ignore them results of Scottish elections. The message from Westminster is that parliamentary democracy is no route to independence. I wonder what they think the consequences will be.
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Deleted
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Post by Deleted on Aug 16, 2022 20:47:26 GMT
It made me feel a bit nauseous, as it would most decent folk I'd imagine including my parents whose political views are/were very different to mine. Humour in the world renowned English 'oh come on, it's just a joke' mould. Have you tried Gaviscon.?
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domjg
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Post by domjg on Aug 16, 2022 20:50:50 GMT
It made me feel a bit nauseous, as it would most decent folk I'd imagine including my parents whose political views are/were very different to mine. Humour in the world renowned English 'oh come on, it's just a joke' mould. Have you tried Gaviscon.? That's for acid reflux. I find not watching misogynistic 'jokes' to be a good anti-nausea measure.
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Post by graham on Aug 16, 2022 20:51:06 GMT
Westminster will clearly not feel bound by a Referendum which it has not authorised. Those who talk in terms of UDI are likely to be rather naive in that it would not be seen as legitimate by the Unionist population in Scotland - and would likely be a recipe for administrative chaos with Unionists rejecting the writ of Holyrood whilst continuing to accept that of Westminster.It might also provoke the imposition of Direct Rule with Holyrood suspended as happened to Stormont in early 1972.
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Post by RAF on Aug 16, 2022 21:05:33 GMT
Westminster will clearly not feel bound by a Referendum which it has not authorised. Those who talk in terms of UDI are likely to be rather naive in that it would not be seen as legitimate by the Unionist population in Scotland - and would likely be a recipe for administrative chaos with Unionists rejecting the writ of Holyrood whilst continuing to accept that of Westminster.It might also provoke the imposition of Direct Rule with Holyrood suspended as happened to Stormont in early 1972. Well I don't support a UDI based referendum as such. However, that is not ultimately the issue. The issue is that Sunak's approach would mean that even if the vast majority of Scots wanted independence, Westminster could simply tell them to get lost. That's nonsense. Westminster has been able to manage the issue to date (i) because the 2014 Referendum failed and (ii) because opinion polls haven't since shown a decisive majority for independence. The second of these is more significant than the first. This is a numbers game and Sunak knows it.
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oldnat
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Extremist - Undermining the UK state and its institutions
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Post by oldnat on Aug 16, 2022 21:17:06 GMT
So no parliamentary democratic route to a second Scottish independence from the Tories: As I have long predicted, even if the SC rules that the Scottish Parliament has the competence to call indyref2, the Tories (probably with Lab, LD & DUP support) will amend the Scotland Act to remove that competence.
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Post by eor on Aug 16, 2022 21:21:13 GMT
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oldnat
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Post by oldnat on Aug 16, 2022 21:22:04 GMT
It looks like some US Republicans are moving even further down the dark path, talking less of the 'stolen election' and beginning to openly play with being against democracy and majority rule if demographics go against them. 'We are a Republic not a democracy' is apparently a new rallying cry to some who appear to seek an Apartheid where self-defined 'real Americans' get to lord it over everyone else. Scary stuff: www.nytimes.com/2022/08/15/magazine/arizona-republicans-democracy.html?searchResultPosition=1 In the US mid-terms, one thing to look out for is the fate of the Trumpists running for Secretary of State in their respective states.
That person will have the constitutional power to authorise, or declare invalid, the results of any election in that state - from a county dog-catcher to a US Presidential election.
They genuinely do intend to steal the elections in 2024.
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Post by eor on Aug 16, 2022 21:34:52 GMT
@ lefthanging In not too long I will be becoming a father for the first time so I'll look forward to child benefit fun in future!
Hope all goes well - I would strongly advise that both of you get as much sleep now as you can now. Hope you have your nursery ready (I was about a month early with my first, and we hadn't got round to putting the cot up).
Thank you - genuinely much appreciated! Alas we rent and don't really have a suitable spare room for a proper 'nursery' right now but will hopefully manage to move in time and get something set up. As for the cot, not to worry - apparently a 'snuzpod' is the plan for the first 6 months or so before moving into a cot. Not that we have one of those either! It's the route we went down and would hugely recommend - something that lets you reach out and soothe the baby without having to sit up (or certainly get out of bed) makes a big difference to the impact on your own sleep. (ours also arrived a month early - on that front it's also worth having a pack of eg tesco value sleepsuits that are a size smaller than you're predicted to need; the weight estimates from the scans can easily be off by 10-20%, and as we found in the first few weeks the smallest sizes aren't consistently available in many shops)
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Post by davwel on Aug 16, 2022 21:36:30 GMT
So Trump is coming this weekend, and his son is boasting:
“He’s incredibly proud of it [Turnberry]. You just can’t beat what has been done here in the last few years.
"What we’ve done is make Turnberry the best property in the world with one of the best courses in the world. People appreciate that."
But Mr Trump has been warned he is likely to face criticism during his visit.
Did Sunak or Truss have an opinion in the Tory husting? - I didn`t waste my time watching these two incompetents displaying their very different faults.
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Post by eor on Aug 16, 2022 21:42:46 GMT
But , as I may already have said , its too long . Why the 1922 Committee wanted it this way I have no idea. But then-I dont think their members should be choosing the PM. The MPs should.. Norman Tebbit had a typically succinct view on this the other day - he said it was undemocratic to let the members elect the leader as their sole qualifying attribute was having paid a fee to do so. (he also criticised the practicality, suggesting that a Corbyn-style situation where the members foist a leader that the parliamentary party oppose could be a whole lot more problematic in Government than Opposition, but I thought the first angle was more novel)
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oldnat
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Extremist - Undermining the UK state and its institutions
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Post by oldnat on Aug 16, 2022 21:45:55 GMT
Fans of Mick Lynch may care to note these comments of his -
“The future of Scotland and its constitution is a matter for the Scottish people. I’m not going to come to Scotland and tell people what they should do and that [the holding of indyref2] is a matter to be decided democratically through all the means that the Scottish people have, through debate, and if that means a referendum at the end that’s what will happen.
“But it’s got to be the will of the Scottish people that’s expressed, and it’s not for me to come up from London and wade into that debate. That’s for Scotland to sort out, and I’ll be happy to assist in that in our union. We did that before on the last referendum.
“We’re a democratic union and we’ll go where democracy takes us.”
Would that Labour adopt a similar stance.
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Post by isa on Aug 16, 2022 21:47:22 GMT
Possibly something of a watershed moment on the BBC1 lunchtime news? Economics Correspondent Andy Verity squarely acknowledging Brexit as being a factor in the inability of the hospitality industry to operate at full efficiency due to insufficient staff being available. I personally don't recall the 'B' word being used so candidly on such a high profile mainstream news bulletin previously. I was looking out to see if Andy would repeat his heresy on the 6 pm and 10 pm bulletins. No mention of his previous Brexit assertion in either. Feel free to draw your own conclusions.
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Post by matt126 on Aug 16, 2022 21:47:39 GMT
PS. We are told that a £30 billlion fix on winter fuel costs would, if it recurred, add up to v big bill. But Truss's £30 Billion in tax cuts would be a recurring loss of governemnt income, another v big bill expressed in a different form. The counter-argument is that tax cuts give people a choice of how to spend a greater disposable income & they create economic growth by stimulating demand for goods & services &, more vaguely, by stimulating individual enterprise. But everybody spends money on gas &/or electricity. Hence a fix has the same effects on disposable income & demand as tax cuts; esp among lower-income households, who spend a higher proportion of their incomes on energy, & thus gain more % of disposable income from the fix, even if their absolute spend on energy is lower than among the better-off. One difference would be that tax cuts are seldom if ever reversed, while energy subsidies could be indexed or phased out as prices fell: plius the admin cosats of a fix are v low. I know little about the economics of tax & fiscal policy & there may be something horribly wrong in virtually equating £30 billion of (untargeted) fix & (untargeted) tax cuts aimed at individuals & households. Tax cuts are more permanent and also are inflationary resulting in higher BOE interest rates. The freeze in energy prices on the other hand can can be more short term and would reduce inflation. Some of the the money can be raised by another windfall tax. In addition more of the shortfall would be made up if none of the proposed tax cuts went ahead. Keeping the inflation rate down would save the government money on debt repayments , lower wage settlements in the public sector and lower increases in State Pension payments, all of which would lower the government expenditure long term , giving the government the chance to reduce taxes in medium term
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domjg
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Post by domjg on Aug 16, 2022 21:49:44 GMT
Thank you - genuinely much appreciated! Alas we rent and don't really have a suitable spare room for a proper 'nursery' right now but will hopefully manage to move in time and get something set up. As for the cot, not to worry - apparently a 'snuzpod' is the plan for the first 6 months or so before moving into a cot. Not that we have one of those either! It's the route we went down and would hugely recommend - something that lets you reach out and soothe the baby without having to sit up (or certainly get out of bed) makes a big difference to the impact on your own sleep. (ours also arrived a month early - on that front it's also worth having a pack of eg tesco value sleepsuits that are a size smaller than you're predicted to need; the weight estimates from the scans can easily be off by 10-20%, and as we found in the first few weeks the smallest sizes aren't consistently available in many shops) Can vouch for the wonder that is the snuzpod. It allows you to feel close to your baby at night which is nice and very reassuring in the early days. Should have given it away really, but for sentimental reasons it’s still in a box room.
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Post by eor on Aug 16, 2022 22:22:43 GMT
Couple of results to watch in the US tonight, from those electoral hotbeds Wyoming and Alaska!
Liz Cheney (touchstone anti-Trump Republican, currently House member for Wyoming) is predicted to be defeated in her primary election by a candidate endorsed by Trump. Wyoming is not exactly an extensively polled place, so if she does lose the margin is probably academic. Cheney also has another complication beyond being anti-Trump - as the daughter of Dick Cheney she's also kind of the current scion of the extended Bush/Cheney/Karl Rove faction that ran the two Republican presidencies prior to Trump's, which is probably enough to earn her some enmity from outside the Trump support too.
And as ever, Trump's endorsements are not always what they seem - sometimes he does seem to pick people whose positions he likes and support them on principle, but quite a bit he seems to wait and pick from candidates who are already winning, so he can take the credit without necessarily having had much impact.
Meanwhile in Alaska, there's a potentially very tight race in the Special Election for the House seat (the incumbent died earlier this year, so unlike the other votes tonight this is to send someone to the current Congress not pick candidates for the November elections). There are two Republicans and one Democrat running in an STV election, and one of the Republicans is Sarah Palin.
Such polling as there's been suggests that the support is extremely close between the two Republican candidates, and that the other Republican is likely to beat the Democrat fairly comfortably if it's Palin's preferences that are redistributed, whereas Palin might narrowly lose to the Democrat if it's the other way around. It's also the first state-wide election under this voting system, so a big unknown on how accurately the polling will have modelled voters' actual behaviour.
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Post by crossbat11 on Aug 16, 2022 22:25:18 GMT
Have you tried Gaviscon.? That's for acid reflux. I find not watching misogynistic 'jokes' to be a good anti-nausea measure. It may be a fairly lame and silly advert but I couldn't see where there was any mysogony in it. If I understand the meaning of that word it describes a hatred of women. If the one minute sketch cum advert could be accused of anything, there may have been undertones of sexism, but the joke seemed to be about infidelity and promiscuity, two practices common to both genders. As I said, it may have been lame and silly, but mysogonistic? If we bandy words like that about carelessly then they become devoid of meaning.
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Post by mercian on Aug 16, 2022 22:30:58 GMT
c-a-r-f-r-e-wVery interesting stuff about horizontal and vertical launches. Do I remember correctly that some of the Woomera launches were horizontal on rails that then turned vertical? Or was that just an idea that never happened? I've tried (not very hard) to google the answer. Anyway as there are some advantages to horizontal it makes me wonder why NASA and Musk don't use it at least some of the time.
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steve
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Post by steve on Aug 16, 2022 22:54:21 GMT
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c-a-r-f-r-e-w
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A step on the way toward the demise of the liberal elite? Or just a blip…
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Post by c-a-r-f-r-e-w on Aug 16, 2022 23:40:03 GMT
c-a-r-f-r-e-w Very interesting stuff about horizontal and vertical launches. Do I remember correctly that some of the Woomera launches were horizontal on rails that then turned vertical? Or was that just an idea that never happened? I've tried (not very hard) to google the answer. Anyway as there are some advantages to horizontal it makes me wonder why NASA and Musk don't use it at least some of the time. I don’t know about Woomera tbh. I know they tested some scramjet hypersonic tech a few years ago, but don’t know about rockets. Not sure either about NASA, but I did read Musk making some criticism of horizontal launches: "… it seems like...you're high up there and so surely that's good and you're going at...0.7 or 0.8 Mach and you've got some speed and altitude, you can use a higher expansion ratio on the nozzle, doesn't all that add up to a meaningful improvement in payload to orbit? The answer is no, it does not, unfortunately. It's quite a small improvement. It's maybe a 5% improvement in payload to orbit...and then you've got this humungous plane to deal with. Which is just like having a stage. From SpaceX's standpoint, would it make more sense to have a gigantic plane or to increase the size of the first stage by five percent? Uhh, I'll take option two. And then, once you get beyond a certain scale, you just can't make the plane big enough. When you drop...the rocket, you have the slight problem that you're not going the right direction. If you look at what Orbital Sciences did with Pegasus, they have a delta wing to do the turn maneuver but then you've got this big wing that's added a bunch of mass and you've able to mostly, but not entirely, convert your horizontal velocity into vertical velocity, or mostly vertical velocity, and the net is really not great."
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c-a-r-f-r-e-w
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A step on the way toward the demise of the liberal elite? Or just a blip…
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Post by c-a-r-f-r-e-w on Aug 17, 2022 0:24:41 GMT
“It is meant to be a fundamental economic rule that when unemployment falls, wages rise. Companies have to offer higher pay as competition for new staff intensifies – or just to keep existing workers from jumping ship.
Today, joblessness is close to pre-pandemic lows. But pay isn't keeping up with prices, even as the threat of double-digit inflation makes everyone worried.
Official figures on Tuesday showed real earnings fell by the most in at least 20 years in the three months to June. The 4.1pc drop compared with a year earlier means the average British worker is facing two decades of lost pay growth.
…
Low unemployment and a shortage of workers is still pushing up pay in nominal terms. But inflation at a 40-year high means workers' are suffering steep cuts in their purchasing power.
…
Martin Beck, chief economic adviser to the EY ITEM Club, says: “Every recession we have had since the 1990s has seen a shock where pay trends down and has stayed lower permanently.
“People were scared into keeping their pay demands lower because of the experience of unemployment, or globalisation, offshoring – recessions shock people and they never get their confidence back to demand pre-recession pay growth.”‘
Telegraph
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Post by leftieliberal on Aug 17, 2022 1:21:38 GMT
c-a-r-f-r-e-w Very interesting stuff about horizontal and vertical launches. Do I remember correctly that some of the Woomera launches were horizontal on rails that then turned vertical? Or was that just an idea that never happened? I've tried (not very hard) to google the answer. Anyway as there are some advantages to horizontal it makes me wonder why NASA and Musk don't use it at least some of the time. I don’t know about Woomera tbh. I know they tested some scramjet hypersonic tech a few years ago, but don’t know about rockets. Not sure either about NASA, but I did read Musk making some criticism of horizontal launches: "… it seems like...you're high up there and so surely that's good and you're going at...0.7 or 0.8 Mach and you've got some speed and altitude, you can use a higher expansion ratio on the nozzle, doesn't all that add up to a meaningful improvement in payload to orbit? The answer is no, it does not, unfortunately. It's quite a small improvement. It's maybe a 5% improvement in payload to orbit...and then you've got this humungous plane to deal with. Which is just like having a stage. From SpaceX's standpoint, would it make more sense to have a gigantic plane or to increase the size of the first stage by five percent? Uhh, I'll take option two. And then, once you get beyond a certain scale, you just can't make the plane big enough. When you drop...the rocket, you have the slight problem that you're not going the right direction. If you look at what Orbital Sciences did with Pegasus, they have a delta wing to do the turn maneuver but then you've got this big wing that's added a bunch of mass and you've able to mostly, but not entirely, convert your horizontal velocity into vertical velocity, or mostly vertical velocity, and the net is really not great." I don't believe Musk knows what he's talking about. If you think about it, almost all of the velocity needed to put a satellite in orbit is horizontal, not vertical. Look at vertical launches and you see that the rocket launcher quite quickly turns over once it gets above the lower atmosphere. To get a launch vehicle to a height of 100 miles (160 km) requires a vertical speed of 1.8 km/s; to keep a satellite in orbit at this altitude requires a horizontal speed of around 8 km/s (5 miles/s).
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