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Post by thexterminatingdalek on Jan 4, 2024 19:04:22 GMT
Well Steve, I suppose it depends on what one defines as meaningful representation, and whether Davey can lift that heady 10.8 between now and election day, say to the 11.6 they achieved in 2019.
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pjw1961
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Post by pjw1961 on Jan 4, 2024 19:07:16 GMT
It reminded me of the other thing that Starmer and Corbyn have in common: they are both Gooners. Nobody's perfect!
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Post by shevii on Jan 4, 2024 19:14:58 GMT
"restoring some measure of local democracy" - even oldnat, while rubbishing the devolution proposals, conceded that Labour's plans are revolutionary for English local government. Starmer referenced it as recently as his speech today saying: "Government in this country is too centralised and controlling, and because of that, too disconnected from the communities it needs to serve." labour.org.uk/updates/stories/a-new-britain-renewing-our-democracy-and-rebuilding-our-economy/He promised that for internal Labour Party business as well- "No NEC imposed candidates" and yet time and again the NEC has imposed candidates on local parties or given them a very limited choice. Many constituency parties have also been "run" by regional offices for whatever factional purposes on the flimsiest of excuses while complaints about disputed elections that end up with right wing candidates are ignored. I don't see any way that someone who has taken such an authoritarian stance internally is likely to take a different view in government and we've seen conflicts with regional mayors including Khan, Burnham and fatal ones with the popular Jamie Driscoll. This is not a man who is going to cede power that might go against his own agenda. The document you quote and the key section "Our plan for reform" just seems to be a random string of words put together to look like it means something- I was unable to dig anything concrete at all out of that document, which doesn't mean he won't do something but given the points I mentioned above then really how radical is it likely to be if his mates are briefing against even Andy Burnham?
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Post by graham on Jan 4, 2024 19:17:48 GMT
Next week will provide some clue as to GE timing. Will the Government move the writ for Wellingborough? No requirement that a writ has to be moved immediately a seat becomes vacant, though there is now a convention that it occurs within 3 months. That could take us to Easter. If a writ is moved within the next two weeks , it would suggest that a May election is unlikely.
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Danny
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Post by Danny on Jan 4, 2024 19:29:40 GMT
Continuing the theme of the global savaging that health systems are getting, Hospital Emergency Departments across the City of Adelaide have all now declared 'white alerts', which are what happens when you exceed red alerts. Been quite a bit of that recently in the UK. Proximal cause being doctor strikes? I gather doctors pay and conditions in australia are much better, so probably that isnt the cause there? But as to hospitals being full, thats because we have massively cut the number of beds compared to historic levels. It would not surprise me that doctors in various countries have similar ideas on how to run a service, and therefore the lowest number of beds they can get away with to be cost effective. Bottom line, if one bed is empty all year round, thats a bed to be eliminated as an unnecessary cost. So it would be. Then the problem becomes how to interpret fluctuations of demand, and we absolutely err on the side of optimism. A former nurse of my acquaintance is wont to say, that in his day if there was a wave of illness, we just stuffed as many extra beds into the wards as we needed. Mowadays, firstly that isnt legally allowed. Secondly, a bed has beome more a dedicated computer system in its own right than a flat surface to lie on, so trundling up extra ones isnt so easy. We have rather designed out the traditional solutioon to winter surges of demand. I agree its all pretty standard. Business as usual. No massive waves of death. Society continuing much as usual. Nothing whatever we can do to mitigate the situation, just experience it. The good news is that never on earth has covid caused the level of harm predicted for it, whtever anyone did or didnt do about it. Had we just pretended it was normal winter illness, all would have turned out much the same. And thats the bottom line alec. Nothing we can usefully do about covid except ignore it and treat anyone who happens to have symptoms. Everyone expects death tolls will be more or less normal. What is worrying is why you want to scare the nation.
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Danny
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Post by Danny on Jan 4, 2024 19:34:07 GMT
again Starmer committed today to zero carbon electricity by 2030. He is going to abandon nuclear and make a dash to install onshore wind then? and presumably a bit of fudge over using carbon for weather extreme conditions, maybe offset against extra electricity replacing fossil heating?
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Danny
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Post by Danny on Jan 4, 2024 19:47:46 GMT
It's not as if the contractors are trying to do a bad job, but as everyone knows you are the worst person to proof-read your own writing and the same applies to software. Its now a matter of record that fujitsu knew the software had faults and did not meet the requirements for introducing it to service, but they had a contractual deadline to do so. Its not so clear whether they knew exactly what the faults were, presumably if they had they might have fixed them. Alternatively, these faults might have been of such a fundamental nature no real fix was possible in the available time so they simply pretended they didnt exist. I doubt they considered that people might be sent to jail because of their faulty software, more the usual multi million pound lawsuits for failure. I dont know what the contracts said, fujitsu might or might not be liable for the cost of making good what went wrong. If not, then once the system began to fail in service, then presumably post office itself was liable to compensate the victims, its own staff and pay the capital costs for a usuless system. And since proper compensation to set this right surely must be starting at a billion pounds and rising from there, what really happened is likely everyone saw this cost as career ending and therefore they believed there was no alternative but to deny there was a problem. Total costs of a failed system might be in the region more like ten billion pounds if you scrapped the whole thing. But scrapping it does not seem to have been an option once it had been introduced. What would you do as the management responsible for a multi billion pound system which could not be uninstalled, which was losing money randomly? (or inventing fake shortfalls). Admit they could not be sure true account balances, or pretent there were no faults?
Has government stood up and admitted most money spent on the covid epidemic was wasted? Has the opposition? Isnt this continuing denial much the same as post office management?
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steve
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Post by steve on Jan 4, 2024 20:55:46 GMT
Outside of the alternative reality of jibland and mostly extremist anonymous Tory enablers on Twitter there is no call for Davey to resign, the limited news coverage that does exist related to the reports that senior post office executives lied to him when he was a junior minister
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Post by EmCat on Jan 4, 2024 20:56:28 GMT
What I find difficult to understand, as someone who has worked with computers all my life, is why nobody (neither subpostmasters nor PO managers) thought to run a parallel manual accounting system at a branch reporting problems in order to prove if Horizon was accurate or not. Post Office managers who didn't understand how important testing of software is, particularly of edge cases that you don't expect to occur, but are possible. It is entirely possible that they did understand how important testing of software is, but never managed to find the edge cases, so assumed everything was fine. When a system is being computerised for the first time, there is no ready made pool of data to use for testing, so some will have been created, based on a set of assumptions about what might happen. If those assumptions turned out to be either incorrect, or were correct but extremely rare, then the test data may not have had any actual edge cases that would really challenge the system. Either way, parallel running against the manual version where an anomaly had been noted would likely then have shown why the software and the manual versions differed.
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Danny
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Post by Danny on Jan 4, 2024 21:10:13 GMT
Post Office managers who didn't understand how important testing of software is, particularly of edge cases that you don't expect to occur, but are possible. It is entirely possible that they did understand how important testing of software is, but never managed to find the edge cases, so assumed everything was fine. When a system is being computerised for the first time, there is no ready made pool of data to use for testing, so some will have been created, based on a set of assumptions about what might happen. If those assumptions turned out to be either incorrect, or were correct but extremely rare, then the test data may not have had any actual edge cases that would really challenge the system. Either way, parallel running against the manual version where an anomaly had been noted would likely then have shown why the software and the manual versions differed. Fujitsu KNEW there were bugs and it wasnt ready for use, but they had a deadline. Thats been admitted in court.
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pjw1961
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Post by pjw1961 on Jan 4, 2024 21:32:46 GMT
again Starmer committed today to zero carbon electricity by 2030. He is going to abandon nuclear and make a dash to install onshore wind then? and presumably a bit of fudge over using carbon for weather extreme conditions, maybe offset against extra electricity replacing fossil heating? On shore wind definitely - that's been said - and planning permission unblocked for solar farms I imagine. Nuclear does not emit carbon of course, but isn't going to be of much help by 2030.
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pjw1961
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Post by pjw1961 on Jan 4, 2024 21:37:04 GMT
He promised that for internal Labour Party business as well- "No NEC imposed candidates" and yet time and again the NEC has imposed candidates on local parties or given them a very limited choice. Many constituency parties have also been "run" by regional offices for whatever factional purposes on the flimsiest of excuses while complaints about disputed elections that end up with right wing candidates are ignored. How are things going over in the Green Party? Do tell. I'll try to keep your strictures on Labour Party democracy in mind when I'm casting my votes soon at the hustings to select the Labour parliamentary candidate for Braintree.
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neilj
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Post by neilj on Jan 4, 2024 22:06:07 GMT
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Post by alec on Jan 4, 2024 22:17:37 GMT
pjw1961 - "On shore wind definitely - that's been said - and planning permission unblocked for solar farms I imagine." If Labour (or anyone else) think that unblocking planning is the key to any target for 2030, they'll be in for something of a shock. In my area, the current waiting list for grid connections, even relatively small ones, is 10 years across much of the region. You can grant all the planning permissions you like, but if you can't plug the damn things in, it's all a bit pointless.
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Post by robbiealive on Jan 4, 2024 22:27:09 GMT
No, Steve, I know exactly how first past the post works. One of its principal effects, according to my old A level government and political studies teacher, and roughly borne out in the four decades since, is that to achieve worthwhile representation a party needs around thirty per cent support, hence the libdems dire showing since 2010. They had the opportunity to offer supply and demand and didn't. They share direct responsibility for all the unnecessary misery, suffering and deaths caused by austerity. They threw away the best opportunity this country will see in our lifetimes of electoral reform, and their collaboration with the Tories led directly to Brexit. And now Davey appears to have questions to answer concerning Horizon, chiefly whether he is still a liar or merely a credulous fool. On their current polling, they stand no chance of improving their representation. If their version of tactical voting worked they would have taken Bedford. Having failed there, labour can now look at the west country seats Davey fantasises are within his grasp and ignore any talk of being unable to win here, there or anywhere. And it serves Davey right. I liked yr post but it did become more improbable as it raced along. 1. Even Steve would agree that the coalition was a mistake: a decision opposed however by only, was it 3 of their MPs, from which they never recovered. But Cameron would never have agreed to PR. If anyone scuppered that over time it was Blair not Clegg? And did the Coalition really lead directly to Brexit. Labour didn't do too well either in 2015 in preventing the Tory majority that allowed Brexit: though obviously the massive loss of Lib-Dem seats didn't help! 2. There are west-country seats that Labour would be pressed to win. Eg., North Devon, Thorpe's old seat, where Labour have never got 10% of the vote, even in '97. The Tory incumbent is the invisible S. Saxby. (1) 3. Have they not usually got a higher percenatge of the vote in GEs than in polling. Esp when Tories in trouble. PS. The Question Time post was a classic. It will be included in my 10,000 Best Posts in UK Polling Report 2 which I am preparing for the GE period this year. All those who have published 5,000+ posts will be invited to contribute to the forward & to suggest posts for inclusion. (1) She founded the independent sports bra retailer Lessbounce Ltd. in 2000, and ran the business until 2016, when it went into liquidation. The business rather sagged at the end.
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Post by crossbat11 on Jan 4, 2024 22:34:32 GMT
robbiealive
An amusing post that was chuckle-inducing in parts. I'll call it a Curators Egg.
Welcome to my world of Carry On humour too!
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Post by robbiealive on Jan 4, 2024 22:35:49 GMT
pjw1961 - "On shore wind definitely - that's been said - and planning permission unblocked for solar farms I imagine." If Labour (or anyone else) think that unblocking planning is the key to any target for 2030, they'll be in for something of a shock. In my area, the current waiting list for grid connections, even relatively small ones, is 10 years across much of the region. You can grant all the planning permissions you like, but if you can't plug the damn things in, it's all a bit pointless. How will the shock be powered: solar, wind?
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Post by robbiealive on Jan 4, 2024 22:44:14 GMT
robbiealive An amusing post that was chuckle-inducing in parts. I'll call it a Curators Egg. Welcome to my world of Carry On humour too! Did you mean Curate's Egg or did Curators (sic) Egg = a museum piece. The level of illiteracy on this site makes it hard to tell. Bizarrely, in my exhausted state I'm reading My Family & Other Animals for the first time. Its dated comic idiom is catching.
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pjw1961
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Post by pjw1961 on Jan 4, 2024 22:47:20 GMT
pjw1961 - "On shore wind definitely - that's been said - and planning permission unblocked for solar farms I imagine." If Labour (or anyone else) think that unblocking planning is the key to any target for 2030, they'll be in for something of a shock. In my area, the current waiting list for grid connections, even relatively small ones, is 10 years across much of the region. You can grant all the planning permissions you like, but if you can't plug the damn things in, it's all a bit pointless. I may be biased on the solar farm thing (and I am guessing on that) because there is a significant planning request in for a solar farm near me which is being blocked by Nimbys on the council. Plugging it into the grid is unlikely to be much of an issue given that a massive new power line is to be built from Norfolk down to London. Again controversial and being fought by the Nimbys. But this is the kind of infrastructure development the country needs if it is ever going to get out of the stagnation it is stuck in. www.bbc.co.uk/news/uk-england-suffolk-66023678
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Post by Deleted on Jan 4, 2024 23:21:49 GMT
robbiealive“ PS. The Question Time post was a classic. It will be included in my 10,000 Best Posts in UK Polling Report 2 which I am preparing for the GE period this year. All those who have published 5,000+ posts will be invited to contribute to the forward & to suggest posts for inclusion. “ You have my permission to use one of mine - provided it is correctly placed in the FOREWORD. I doubt if I will make the 5000 post mark though as I have a life.
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Post by crossbat11 on Jan 4, 2024 23:24:14 GMT
robbiealive An amusing post that was chuckle-inducing in parts. I'll call it a Curators Egg. Welcome to my world of Carry On humour too! Did you mean Curate's Egg or did Curators (sic) Egg = a museum piece. The level of illiteracy on this site makes it hard to tell. Bizarrely, in my exhausted state I'm reading My Family & Other Animals for the first time. Its dated comic idiom is catching. It was a weak attempt at wordplay on my behalf, robbie. The Curator's Egg, as opposed to Curate's Egg, amused me. I see you as our benign forum curator in some ways.
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steve
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Post by steve on Jan 4, 2024 23:24:48 GMT
"You have my permission to use one of mine - provided it is correctly placed in the FOREWORD. I doubt if I will make the 5000 post mark though as I have a life."
We only have your word on that
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oldnat
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Post by oldnat on Jan 4, 2024 23:59:38 GMT
"Davey then most likely had advice from civil servants on the official line that this was a private matter for a private company. Obviously it wasnt, since the causal events took place entirely under state control. Moreover, this became a matter of how the whole legal system functions, in that the post office brought private prosecutions where it also controlled all the evidence necessary to prove or disprove a case, and only submitted to court any beneficial to its own case. Operational control and funding of the post office is still essentially under government control because it is a loss making essential service where the profitable parts of the business have been asset stripped from the loss making essential services. So never mind 2010, this is still a matter for government and was clearly so then. However, it was probably at the forefront of government thinking that this scandal would severely hamper any further privatisations, so its existence went unacknowledged officially. By lab, con and libs." Well stated. I would like to see if there are grounds for a criminal case against the Post Office managers for conspiracy to pervert the course of justice. In criminal cases, if the police or CPS withhold information from the defence, that can be sufficient grounds on its own to overturn a conviction. While I wouldn't hold my breath waiting for the PO managers to be prosecuted, it's perhaps more likely that they could be prosecuted in Scotland.
There seem to have been proportionally fewer cases in the Scottish courts than in E&W, and that seems likely to have been because private prosecutions seldom happen here. In the cases that did appear in front of courts here, the PO would have had to submit their allegations to the police, who would have submitted a report to the procurator fiscal who would have conducted the prosecution, on behalf of the Crown.
"The Scottish Criminal Cases Review Commission (SCCRC) concluded that new information about Horizon, which had emerged since Ms Sinclair's trial, would have had a material bearing on a "critical issue". The commission also said it may have explained why there was a shortfall of funds at the Post Office branch where she worked. And it found that the prosecution could be seen as oppressive because the absence of the relevant evidence rendered the trial unfair."
www.bbc.co.uk/news/uk-scotland-66964774
If the prosecutors are labelled as "oppressive", then it would seem to be a reasonable step for them to prosecute those "who bore false witness" - though, inevitably, they would be the low grade investigators, not those who instructed them!
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Post by robbiealive on Jan 5, 2024 0:05:52 GMT
robbiealive “ PS. The Question Time post was a classic. It will be included in my 10,000 Best Posts in UK Polling Report 2 which I am preparing for the GE period this year. All those who have published 5,000+ posts will be invited to contribute to the forward & to suggest posts for inclusion. “ You have my permission to use one of mine - provided it is correctly placed in the FOREWORD. I doubt if I will make the 5000 post mark though as I have a life. Damn hoisted by my own petard! The book will be sub-titled: Pundits or Poseurs! The Reader Will Judge! etc.
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Post by ptarmigan on Jan 5, 2024 0:16:37 GMT
As most informed people thought Sunak suggests election will be in the second half of the year I think certain sections of the media got overly carried away with the idea of a spring general election in the wake of the autumn statement when in reality Sunak just seemed to be hedging his bets. The Tories are many things but they're not daft enough to call an early election when their polling's in the gutter. "Working assumption" is intriguing wording though, perhaps just hinting that the possibility of a spring election is being left open. The only ways I think we get there is if there's a Tory resurgence in the polls or if Sunak feels like he has little other option. I don't see anything on the horizon to suggest that the former is likely but there may still be a chance of the latter (for example, there will definitely be Tory ructions over the Rwanda bill when it's back for third reading and the fallout from that could be "interesting").
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Post by ptarmigan on Jan 5, 2024 0:37:00 GMT
The Ed Davey chat seems like an example of the sort of thing that's much more likely to be of interest to political obsessives rather than the public at large. I suspect most of the public probably couldn't pick Davey out of a lineup, let alone tell you anything very much about his role in a coalition government that ran its course 9 years ago. Obviously there's still some brand damage to the Lib Dems as a result of the coalition years, but I rather doubt many of those who remain hostile towards them as a result of their part in austerity etc would be much more likely to vote for them if they had a different leader. Ultimately, the coalition years aren't going to feature heavily in a GE campaign anyway, especially in Lib Dem/Tory battleground seats where drawing attention to the various failings of that era would be an own goal for both parties.
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Post by isa on Jan 5, 2024 0:41:32 GMT
Sad to note the death of Glynis Johns. At the grand old age of 100, hardly a surprise, but significant in that she was just about the last remaining significant star from the Golden Age of cinema. The likes of Leslie Caron, Sophia Loren and Joan Collins are still with us, but I can't think offhand of any other surviving actors/actresses who appeared in feature films before WW2.
An early important role for her came in one of my favourites, '49th Parallel', in 1941. Hard to get your head around the fact that the film's star, Leslie Howard, died in 1943. She therefore outlived him by over 80 years.
She was the daughter of Mervyn Johns, that great old character actor in umpteen British films, including two more of my favourites, 'Went the Day Well?' (1942) and 'Dead of Night' (1945).
This really is a bit of an end of an era, so, as I raise my glass of Christmas Chablis, the toast is Glynis Johns. Thanks for the memories.
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Post by crossbat11 on Jan 5, 2024 6:49:51 GMT
Sad to note the death of Glynis Johns. At the grand old age of 100, hardly a surprise, but significant in that she was just about the last remaining significant star from the Golden Age of cinema. The likes of Leslie Caron, Sophia Loren and Joan Collins are still with us, but I can't think offhand of any other surviving actors/actresses who appeared in feature films before WW2. An early important role for her came in one of my favourites, '49th Parallel', in 1941. Hard to get your head around the fact that the film's star, Leslie Howard, died in 1943. She therefore outlived him by over 80 years. She was the daughter of Mervyn Johns, that great old character actor in umpteen British films, including two more of my favourites, 'Went the Day Well?' (1942) and 'Dead of Night' (1945). This really is a bit of an end of an era, so, as I raise my glass of Christmas Chablis, the toast is Glynis Johns. Thanks for the memories. Amen. When my wife wakes up and discovers this news, she will be particularly sad. She was named after Glynis Johns. Her Scottish mother was a great fan of Johns and particularly liked her role in the early 50s film, "Rob Roy, The Highland Rogue". My wife, known as Glyn, short for Glynis, has repeatedly been called Glen or Glenys by mistake throughout her life. Glynis is a much more unusual forename. When she corrects people, and tells them the origin of her name, people often use that as a trigger to reminisce about Glynis Johns. Nearly always fondly and admiringly too. RIP Glynis Johns.
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steve
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Post by steve on Jan 5, 2024 7:09:49 GMT
Here's an aerial view of vicarage road in all its natural gravel pit beauty before some ejit decided to build Watford football ground in it. Sadly gone but not forgotten. Attachment Deleted
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pjw1961
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Post by pjw1961 on Jan 5, 2024 7:22:51 GMT
robbiealive “ PS. The Question Time post was a classic. It will be included in my 10,000 Best Posts in UK Polling Report 2 which I am preparing for the GE period this year. All those who have published 5,000+ posts will be invited to contribute to the forward & to suggest posts for inclusion. “ You have my permission to use one of mine - provided it is correctly placed in the FOREWORD. I doubt if I will make the 5000 post mark though as I have a life. Damn hoisted by my own petard! The book will be sub-titled: Pundits or Poseurs! The Reader Will Judge! etc. You missed 'Pedants' in your alliteration.
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