Mailwatch(ed) Forum

That is an absolute classic of the "why can't everyone have the same hobby as me?" genre.

Spectacular failure to understand that this is private investment too.

The Guardian BTL was barely above this standard. My favourite was somebody who reckoned the government should have told them to build the park "in the north". Perhaps the French Government missed a trick by not insisting Eurodisney was built in one of the impoverished Outre-Mer departements.

The Weeping Angel wrote: ↑Thu Apr 10, 2025 10:32 am Maybe it's me but outside of immigration when has the government been reform lite?

The immigration policy isn't really Reform-lite either. Net migration is likely to settle down at about 200-300k per year. Reform want zero net.

A lot of the comment is "why do they do this, we know how it ends?", with the same people pointing to Sanchez in Spain for how to do it.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Opinion_p ... l_election

The PP and Vox seem to have settled down with 46-48% in the polls. That's not all that different to the UK.

Tubby Isaacs wrote: ↑Thu Apr 10, 2025 11:35 am The Guardian BTL was barely above this standard.

Yesterday's Guardian CIF absolutely reeked of middle class intellectual snobbery.

Are you on there? I had to delete my account because I get sucked into it in a bad way, unlike on here.

Will out of The Inbetweeners liked theme parks. You can't get much more middle class intellectual than that.

Tubby Isaacs wrote: ↑Thu Apr 10, 2025 12:01 pm Are you on there? I had to delete my account because I get sucked into it in a bad way, unlike on here.

I used to be, but like you I got sucked in and also deleted my account.

The Guardian comment section is a bin fire always has been I make it a point to avoid at all costs.

Tubby Isaacs wrote: ↑Thu Apr 10, 2025 11:51 am A lot of the comment is "why do they do this, we know how it ends?", with the same people pointing to Sanchez in Spain for how to do it.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Opinion_p ... l_election

The PP and Vox seem to have settled down with 46-48% in the polls. That's not all that different to the UK.

Oh that's interesting then again everyone says Spain is pro-immigration.

Labour keeps pandering to dead voters.

https://archive.ph/xtbKI#selection-1285.0-1288.0

Esprit de corpse
Perhaps both main parties obsess about the dead because they are fed up with the living. Familiarity has bred contempt in both Labour and the Conservatives. Each treats its heart-beating base with derision. Labour is at war with its soft-hearted supporters who prefer higher taxes to benefit cuts and want full-throated condemnation from Sir Keir of the Israeli government blowing Gazans to bits. The Conservatives, meanwhile, have picked fights with Britain’s most successful corners, disdaining those in the home counties who work from home for two days a week or complain about the queue at Geneva Airport before a skiing holiday.

British politics is shackled to a corpse. Undoing those chains would leave everyone better off. A closer relationship with Europe is the quickest and easiest way—both in terms of politics and policy—to generate growth. Accepting the economy for how it is rather than what it used to be is the best way of fixing it. Plenty of living voters share some of Dead Man’s opinions and background: Britain still has authoritarian Eurosceptics whom politicians must take into account, while even now, less than half of young people go to university. Yet politicians leading parties plumbing all-time lows in the polls, as both the Conservatives and Labour are, behave as if no other voters exist. The fix is simple: a politics that caters for the living rather than just the whims of the dead. ■

That's a reasonable piece.

The Weeping Angel wrote: ↑Thu Apr 10, 2025 1:01 pm

Oh that's interesting then again everyone says Spain is pro-immigration.

It is, but it's still got the same political problem with the same sort of people we have. Funnily enough they don't all go away when you make a positive case and bring in a wealth tax.

Argue on the merits of the policies by all means, but the politics is much less clear than people like to make out.

Labour is at war with its soft-hearted supporters who prefer higher taxes to benefit cuts

They mostly prefer the higher taxes on other people, it should be said. You could get more than enough to wipe out the benefit cuts though.

A fair point, and it won't be the only Labour seat where something like this is true. The Economist point out how poor productivity in manufacturing has been and then object to Starmer focussing on it.

More than most people I get annoyed with the implication that only these jobs are "real", but they are jobs and the PM promoting them- do they think Reeves doesn't promote financial services?- can't really do much harm.

https://bsky.app/profile/antoniabance.b ... hlu46avc2i

This is in itself reasonable- Bozo bloated the Cabinet Office from 2019 onwards, with only small reduction under Sunak. It'll still be quite a bit above what it was under Gordon Brown, when most things worked better. It's hard not to look at this and think that the staff would have been better employed getting stuff done in the frontline departments/ agencies.

The Institute of Government are more sceptical about the overall direction of the restructuring. I can see a logic to it- work done by ministries, not the Cabinet Office or agencies. Obviously, there are some nice easy headlines in killing quangos, but they weren't really a thing till the 80s-90s, and the criticism that they took away accountability was felt to be a very powerful one, not least among the sort of opinion that's gunning for Starmer now. What I worry about is whether some of the ministers (especially Streeting) are up to it.

How is this arsehole allowed to present Sky's flagship Sunday show? If this were somebody on the BBC sticking it to the Tories, they'd have been off current affairs in 5 seconds. And, in this case, rightly.

Trevor Phillips, who is now a Sky News presenter, told Times Radio that the government’s move was “obviously political”.

“People in government who are responsible for this, who are in other ways completely decent people, should really be ashamed of themselves, because it’s so obvious that they’re not doing this because of the demographic of the people involved, as Katie Lam, the Tory MP, said yesterday, largely Pakistani Muslim in background, and also in Labour-held seats and councils who would be offended by it,” he said.

The Tories not holding these inquiries must have been too spare offence to Labour councillors, eh Phillips? I'm glad Cooper told him to fuck off.

davidjay wrote: ↑Thu Apr 10, 2025 1:08 am

Youngian wrote: ↑Wed Apr 09, 2025 10:28 pm

will boost our economy by billions of pounds

Really, sure its not gazillions? Careful now, Noel made similar bold claims about Mr Blobby world.
The man in that costume could now work at Universal World as the Karloff Frankenstein monster.

I remember when Resorts World at the NEC was going to be the UK's Las Vegas.

Wasn't that Blackpool.
Vegas with Greenall Whitley ale.

Good.

I think this is the last day before election purdah that he's allowed to announce stuff.