He’s never there, which means he’s not doing any constituency work. It won’t be missed that he’s taking £100k a year in public money to do F-all. All while he’s also raking in seven figures on “second jobs”, and spending lots of time in the USA trying to butter up Trump.
Can we just deport Farage, on the basis he’s a treasonous snake?
We used to take our first-born with us. She slept in her car seat under the table while we ate. The arrival of #2 put paid to that game though - we could no longer afford restaurants!
Interesting. If I was that rich, I’d hire a serious chef to teach me to cook to pro-chef standards.
My view, sadly, is that no politician will ever legislate to impose penalties on politicians for failing to do their jobs.
Just like they will never move to public funding of politics and banning lobbying, or second jobs, or any of the many other ways big money corrupts our politics.
Meeting the Nolan principles (1) should mean reports are factually accurate. But it doesn’t help with the electorate happily giving a pass on poor behaviour to their team, but no one else. NO team should EVER be excused (2).
And there need to be painful real world penalties, to satisfy (3).
CNN: “It’s a blowout… not even close… Pope Leo absolutely crushing Trump when it comes to how popular they are.”
At last, some realism from a European leader about the Americans. Thank goodness. Let’s hope it’s contagious.
Glorious.
Which are almost impossible to bring to court, and even harder to win.
Johnson’s government killed tens of thousands of the electorate through inaction, bad actions, and ignoring scientific advice. None, NONE, of them have been prosecuted.
The main players all failed upwards.
I think there are two/three main problems:
1. The inability of many of our politicians to clear the (fairly low) bar of the Nolan principles
2. That so few of the electorate & media see this as a problem, for “their team”, and,
3. There is no way for those that do, to force any change of behaviour.
A photo of a print NYT headline saying the strait is open next to an IPhone NYT headline saying it’s closed
Schrödinger’s Strait of Hormuz
Great. And what about those of us in other peoples photos? I assume we don’t get any say over what Google does with our likenesses, as long as the uploader doesn’t say no?
The UK has to pass (2 year long) ERMii before we can officially adopt the Euro anyway. And I strongly suspect our economy wont be strong enough to pass that test when we first join.
Indeed. In both cases, basic education and critical thinking is desperately poor. Fixing that would solve a LOT of problems, both here and in the USA. But education has been a political football for decades now 🙁
But another good point to make is that we’ve changed currency before, when we decimalised, and the sky didn’t fall in then, and wouldn’t now. Especially as most of us are almost entirely cashless now.
I remember talking to one chap about joining the Euro who thought because the Euro was worth less than the pound, his entire bank balance would change currency (but not numerical value) and he would get instantly poorer.
Which was … interesting 🤨
Oh yes, I don’t disagree. I just recognise that with some people there are limits to the impact of a rational but theoretical argument. Need to also cast it in more pragmatic light too, something like making their Spanish holidays cheaper and easier, maybe?
Not sure even that works, because I think for the people that really care about keeping the pound, it’s an emotional thing, not a logical thing. A bit like “sovrinty”. And we all know how that worked out…🙄
And for this reason, I keep hoping against hope that Starmer will finally get it, and start performing better. Because even if the PLP decided to have a coup, they have no one better to replace him with. And neither do any of the other parties.
God, that’s depressing.
Also electoral reform, political reform, reform of ALL the regulators, and media reform. It’s not like they were short of meaningful things to get stuck into…
It’s a pretty good joke 👍
Cost a lot, even back then, in a small sparsely populated country, but made sense as so many Swedes were already driving LHD cars.
The Norwegians tell a joke about how the Swedes made it a success by staggering the switch, with the big lorries starting a couple of days ahead of the cars!
Sweden used to drive on the left like us, but switched in 1967 at 5am. All nonessential traffic was banned on the switch day, and all traffic that was out at the time of the switch had to stop and park up, before swapping to driving on the right at 5am.
I know what you mean. But the conversion costs are prohibitive. Easier to build the bridge with a carriageway swap at one end or the other. You still get to drive straight across, and you can put the signs up on the A14 still 👍
But honestly, if we could choose the timing of adoption (which we can, because we have to apply for and pass ERMii) I’d not have a problem with adopting the Euro.
Brilliant. I really hope so. I’ll have it all please; EU membership, the Euro, Schengen, and a European army, navy and airforce. The sooner the better.
Unlikely the benefits would justify the costs, compared to getting ourselves cleaned up, and asking to join again.
McSweeny’s denied knowing anything about this, but of course he could be lying. In practice, who knows?
If Olly Robbins received instructions from number 10 to circumvent the DV, then why didn’t he keep the receipts as insurance against this very situation?
Add in the avoidance of the questions asked by the Foreign Affairs Committee, as evidenced by Emily Thornbury, and Starmer looks secure to me.
