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To my mind it is the number 1 issue at present, because it directly affects other headline issues like cost of living (in sense of making ends meet for those on low wages), NHS, affordability of housing, and inadequate investment in infrastructure.
Just as I said. HIMARS has been partially jammed but is still registering some hits, ATACMS continues to resist jamming and is doing very significant damage in Crimea and the other occupied areas. Your earlier statement that both had been jammed is untrue - as It a lot of what you post.
What a load of old cobblers. There have been recent problems with the jamming of HIMARS, but over the last two days ATACMS have been very effective with hits on air defences and a command centre.
Regarding the last few posts, I think there is a bit to both sides of the argument. Budgets have increased, especially when one considers the cost of COVID-19, but this is not keeping up with population growth. Ever since I can remember, the NHS has been pressured to achieve cost savings and efficiency gains, but I have the sense that this wears off somewhat, so that each new cohort of managers needs to find new ways to improve things. Overall, the big problem I see is that we have record spending and public debt, but falling per capita productivity and insufficient additional tax receipts from our extra population to fund the uplift needed in services and infrastructure.
I always thought it was the most likely location, but I am surprised by the suggestion that this might depend on the cricket remaining. This would probably mean a rugby stadium with only two sides close to the pitch.
Obviously Sunak has gone for the date that he thinks is most to his advantage, but probably his options were quite limited. The pollsters said that the winter and the main summer holiday period would turn voters off, leaving October or November as the likely dates. But there were also concerns that November would clash with the US Presidential election. So it probably came down to a choice between around October 10th or just before the summer holidays.
It is a poor record. However, for balance we need to consider the macro-economic picture, the contingencies that affected all European governments in recent years, and the polices that both main parties supported. One could argue that after an early period of austerity when the Tory government ran the economy on something closer to the US low-tax, low-spending approach, there was a policy change that brought us closer to the European pattern of high-tax, high-spending public finances. In FY 2023-24 total public expenditure is estimated to be £1,189 billion or 46.5% of GDP, equating to about £42.000 per household. Tax revenues were about £1,095 billion. The high spending coincided with a willingness to increase the national debt, which most European countries did in this same period. In the financial year ending March 2024 the UK Govt borrowed £121.4 billion. Total debt rose to 97.9% of annual GDP.
Policies that Labour also supported, and in some cases said should have gone further include: - Furlough scheme. Cost £70 billion (cf cost of PPE, 2019-end 2021, £17.5 billion). - Energy bill relief/energy price guarantee. Cost £30.3 billion + ? for specific measures such as reduced council tax charges (2022-23). - Country-specific protection schemes for persons from Hong Kong, Afghanistan and Ukraine. Cost ? - Assistance to Ukraine following Russian invasion to 2024 £9.5 billion plus £3 billion promised for current FY. - Public support for a growing population of economically inactive people. Cost ?
My point is simply that many of the problems we now face would have been there under any government, and things will not be easy whoever wins the forthcoming election. Certainly, the last few years haven’t seen relentless spending cuts and closures to fund tax reductions. It is more a case of long-term problems of low productivity, sharply rising population and low investment coming home to roost.
To me it makes more sense to look at policies and assess their impact, than to make judgements about which politicians are most eager to feather their own nests. My own MP here in Swansea West, whom I once voted for, is not exactly a model of Labour moral rectitude. If you look at the numbers of MPs who were elected on either the Conservative or Labour sides, but are now suspended for various nefarious activities, it is pretty much a dead heat. I make it 8 Tories and 7 Labour.
This is a point about which we disagree The mindset which one may gloss as woke is starting to affect key policy areas, not least in the Senedd. And I am less concerned with what is good for Conservative politicians, than what is good for British people.
I struggle to understand Emily Thornberry's point. The French deal shows only too clearly the limits of the help we can expect from our European neighbours, but isn't bigging that up, and increased police cooperation, the core of Labour's solution to the migration problem? Emily would probably end up allowing a new safe route as part of a burden- sharing deal, Much as I deplore what the Tories have done, I can't see how things would not be even worse under Starmer. The woke BS we see from the Senedd is going to be rolled out more widely. Yesterday's news from the Party is their new policy on easier gender switching. What a mess we are in!
Surprisingly Cordina was well beaten. The turning point appeared to be a shot in Round 3 after the referee had called stop boxing. It seemed to me that Cordina got lured into a close-quarters scrap rather than boxing to his strengths at a distance and paid the penalty. TKO in Round 8.
It seems very difficult to find an answer because the Western nations have got themselves in a tangle which is almost impossible to unpick. Basically, the present rate of immigration into developed countries is unsustainable, and eventually the framework of international law will have to change because the pressure will become too much. That is still some way in the future because of internal division and blind commitment to an expanded discourse of human rights, and the damage done by then will probably be irreversible.
Shocking news emerged today about the recovery of the bodies of the three young festival-goers killed on October 7th, but kept in Gaza as bargaining chips. That includes the body of the beautiful young tattoo artist, Shani Louk, whose semi-naked body was paraded around in a pickup truck after she has been sexually molested and had her skull smashed in. Hard to understand the mentality of men who would do that, but who of course count on widespread support in the community that elected Hamas as their government.
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