I must be joking, right? Death of the Monarch; new PM with the most shocking lack of appropriate qualifications, or abilities, or 'ear'[1]; economic crisis; crazy energy plans issuing from every western orifice; war raging.
Well, yes. But here's a list of the straws I'm clutching at this morning:
- As Kev noted BTL a propos the Harry/Meghan thing, Charles has been well advised - that speech of his last night was smart in all sorts of ways: "I'm not rowing back on the 'Queen Consort' thing; I'm not writing any more Green Ink letters; I know what the constitution means" etc etc
- Much as Starmer rushed to frame Truss as "nothing new"[2], with the passing of HMQ and the Winter Crisis about to break there's actually no possibility of thinking of Truss as continuity-anything. If she's smart, (OK, sorry: if she has a team of half-way decent advisers) she'll hitch herself to the new Carolian age every way she can: a huge vicarious honeymoon period with goodwill and benefit-of-the-doubt swilling around everywhere - it's there for the taking. Starmer? he's that old Johnson-era bore. See what we're doing here?
- BBC is on eggshells. Troublemakers can't get a peep right now. Bloody right, too. That'll last for a while, also.
- Oh, and: Ukrainian counter-offensive is being conducted very adroitly. Putin entering another round of screw-ups (to be continued ...)
ND
____________
[1] in her statement she told us that the Queen was "the very spirit of Great Britain". Does she have the slightest idea how hurtful that is to an Ulsterman? How it convinces them they are completely forgotten in Westminster? Anyone wanting to be PM has to be the instinctive master of this stuff (as well as needing staff who are even cleverer still). Sheesh. Maybe she is beyond redemption after all.
[2] you can always spot Framing - they can't help themselves saying it three times in a row and twenty times thereafter
46 comments:
Truss, will do better than many expect. Putler, almost impossible to keep up with speed of collapse, things will stabilise but when and where is apparently beyond even the most educated of military observers.
If Truss can embody the spirit of Thatcher then she might do okay.
I wouldn't put money on it at the bookies however even at 1000-1 odds!
I agree Thud. So far she's doing OK and she was certainly thrown in at the deep end. I've a theory the Queen held on until someone sensible was in post.
And I agree with Thud and Jan.
Politics is about getting a few (usually a very few) crucial strategic decisions right and making sure you've a team who buy into those and get them implemented.
Blair had the "connecting with the people" thing off by heart. Cameron could tell you to hug a hoodie and you believed in his empathy. May was moral, upright, and as honest and plain dealing as politicians get. Boris has panache, could read the mood of the nation and a magnetic personality.
Yet each and every one of them made absolute howlers of a mistake (sometimes several gargantuan mistakes) then -- and this is the clincher -- doubled down on them.
So I don't care if Truss is so wooden I keep looking at the screen closely to see if there's any dry rot. Nor that she's not exactly a firecracker either intellectually or intuitively. Sort out energy (as much as it can be sorted out in the short-term, as previously discussed but do the groundwork for the long-term however much squealing you get from the green scammers and the internationalist lefties). Sort out The Northern Ireland Protocol. Sort out immigration. Don't look, Blair- or Johnson-like that you're about to jump of a cliff, policy-speaking. Be radical in small doses, apply sparingly but don't fail to be sufficiently radical where a radical approach is needed (fracking / big nuclear generation build out, triggering Article 16 or legislating to the same effect, withdrawing from the ECHR).
Get those right, people won't care about the rest.
As one of Putler's most dedicated trolls, I see the excellent Intelslava site is in Dunkirk mode. It looks as if Igor Strelkov, Russian patriot and also doomer extraordinaire, was right all along and has been since 2014.
https://t.me/s/intelslava
Telegram sites are odd, it may ask you to download Telegram, look for the “view in context” option. The other thing is that posts are presented from the bottom up, unlike twitter, so you scroll up to see post history.
Still, it makes no odds on the eventual outcome - this is existential for Russia and they have a long history of recovering from disaster.
"Sort out immigration. Don't look, Blair- or Johnson-like that you're about to jump of a cliff, policy-speaking. Be radical in small doses, apply sparingly but don't fail to be sufficiently radical where a radical approach is needed (fracking / big nuclear generation build out, triggering Article 16 or legislating to the same effect, withdrawing from the ECHR)"
Boris "took back control" by handing out a million visas in a year, instead of Poles we now have Somalis and Nigerians. Can you see Truss doing better? She knows who's paying the party bills.
I'm starting to see Africans in the most unlikely places, like Stirling in Scotland.
https://www.migrationwatchuk.org/press-release/684/migration-watch-comment-on-todays-visa-and-immigration-figures
"Another set of astonishing figures that show the total absence of immigration control. A record 1.1 million visas to come and live in the UK makes it ever-clearer that the government had no intention of delivering on their promise to control and reduce immigration. This is a betrayal of our communities and an assault on the environment and services - already under unbearable pressure. This is what broken promises mean."
@ Anonymous
No-one, or very few these days, anyway, think legal immigration is a bad thing. It’s never a simple question, but most also see the benefits.
Illegal immigration, though, that’s an entirely different animal. I have no particular insights into whether Truss will apply the policy changes needed to address illegal immigration. It will be a big test. The main reason for the inaction and inertia was Johnson’s basic inability to — ironically, given this was a charge levelled against him — piss off the liberal globalists by telling France its problem with migrants wasn’t going to be exported to the U.K. and that the leftist lawyers making big money off ECHR cases were going to have to find another scam to crowdsource (or tap up the likes of Soros for big $’s in funding) for.
What are the benefits, Clive? I can see that employers like cheap labour, any others?
People vote with their feet against immigration, which is why outside every market town there's a ring of new estates.
Tess the Terrible must be delighted she no longer holds the most wooden PM title.
Liz Truss is a bit of a gift for the satirists.
Not just in look. Speech. Manner.
But on name too.
Miz Trust
Lizzie Boredom wields the Axe
Truss in Meeeeeee
Fizz Truss
Liz’s Tailor
Could be a fun era.
Anyway, do feel sorry for the poor mare. Reminds me of a first day on the job, I was only covering a holiday.
An arrest. A stabbing between two employees, not related to the first arrest. And a fire evacuation due to a faulty sensor that emptied half of Oxford street and cost a few hundred thousand quid in lost trade for all.
“it’s not like this every day,is it?” I asked while on the phone to my boss.
“No…no…of course not. Well…not every single day. Anyway..can only get easier, can’t it?”
I think he was well advised ND, especially when he wished Harry and Meghan the best in 'building their new life abroad', when I seemed to hear the unspoken bit: 'where we fervently hope they'll stay...'
@ Royalist in Callao
Probably worth recalling too that the Royal Family successfully deal with Edward and Mrs. Simpson in exile for decades and decades. I have to say, probably no surprise given our modern culture's tendency to make Every Single Thing, Like, The Worst Thing to Happen Evah And I Mean Evah!, that Harry and Meghan aren't a patch on the walking existential liability that those two were.
Trussed up like a turkey
... by events.
I almost feel sorry for her.
And will be impressed if she sees the new year in as pm
Well, I thought the reference to Nutmeg and Ginger was excellent. Charlie had been talking of titles until he came to them whereupon he wished them love and a fine life a long way away, without a mention of their title. And the Royal website has been updated yet Merchie and Lillybucks are still Master and Miss, not Prince and Princess as the Harkle media would have it.
Loved the tale of the Queen offering a room full of priests a drink and them all accepting. When asked if she was having one she replied (paraphrasing) "Goodness me, No! It's Lent!" *Screaming*
About the GB/UK thing. Truss is English and therefore suffers from a genetic incapacity to comprehend the constitutional and geographical arrangements within the British Isles.
Cheer up! Until forty or fifty years ago the fuckers all referred to "England" whether they meant England, England and Wales, GB, or UK. They'd even say that the highest mountain in England is Ben Nevis. (Actual example, heard on the BBC.)
You might as well complain that they can't pronounce "loch", "whales", or indeed the letter "r".
Putin speech to Duma just in:
"Upon the battles in Ukraine depend the survival of Christian civilization. Upon it depends our own Russian life, and the long continuity of our institutions and our homeland. The whole fury and might of the enemy must very soon be turned on us. The State Department knows that they will have to break Russia or lose the war. If we can stand up to them, all Europe may be free and the life of the world may move forward into broad, sunlit uplands. But if we fail, then the whole world, including all that we have known and cared for, will sink into the abyss of a new Dark Age made more sinister, and perhaps more protracted, by the lights of – literally – perverted science. Let us therefore brace ourselves to our duties, and so bear ourselves that, if Holy Russia and its people last for a thousand years, men will still say, “This was their finest hour.”"
My expectations re Truss have been exceeded thus far.
1. She gets that to achieve any change requires large impetus - have the party - get some actual change then deal with paying for it later.
2. The focus on cutting taxes could be transformative by cutting structural blockers e.g. just recinding IR35 and abolishing stamp duty could unblock enormous growth.
3. Main disappointment - not taking on the NHS - having had recent close observation of a top NHS hospital and having experienced overseas systems - it's far far worse than you think.
Al
@ Anonymous 8:19 pm
Would definitely agree on the NHS. Having recent experience of NHS provision (where I’m “in the system” and it would be too disruptive to make alternative arrangements, but that tells you a lot, right there, about how the NHS, cough, delivers) and private medical services, it’s hard to believe both can be given the same label as “healthcare”.
The main difference seems to be that clinicians, primarily the doctor or consultant, manage the delivery of care. The private health providers supply the clinical lead with staff, infrastructure, shared services (e.g. medical secretaries, cost recovery, administrative functions). In the NHS, the clinicians seems to be treated as small dogs in a vast self-serving machine (and, my hunches tell me, are bitterly resented by the non-clinical layers of management and MBAs).
Clive, you are not wrong. Why otherwise would a consultant be earning half what a Fairness and Belonging Manager or a Diversity and Art Deputy Manager earns in the NHS? As a nurse once said to me of NHS administrators "Dickheads with clipboards who stop us doing our job"
"Would definitely agree on the NHS. Having recent experience of NHS provision (where I’m “in the system” and it would be too disruptive to make alternative arrangements, but that tells you a lot, right there, about how the NHS, cough, delivers) and private medical services, it’s hard to believe both can be given the same label as “healthcare”."
You don't think having an additional 1m people to care for inside a year might be at least partly responsible for why the NHS is such a pile of sh*t?
Clive,
Re 'the Old Firm', quite so.
@Clive
From stories told to me by a retired consultant
- many nhs managers are not too clever.
- what they are really managing is the trust relationship with Whitehall. not making things better.
- almost every way of organising a hospital has been tried before. Some ways work many dont.
- yes it grinds you down and so you retire early or emigrate or give up or get a bit cynical and quietly stop striving.
- explaining exactly why something does not work does not make you popular
- wait 2 years and there will be another manager along.
I have never said Putin is winning the war but he is handing us our arses economically. And he has not yet been shot, drugged or ousted as a result of our sanctions.
If the West's intention was to remain NOT socialist or NOT communist then they have made an almighty fuck up in provoking Putin. I said from the outset that he was a real deal psycho who knows how to apply a strangle and we should not have gone anywhere near his grappling range.
We are now politically destabilised and to top it all we have lost our Lizzy who was about the only person keeping the republican Commies at bay.
I simply cannot get over the fact that we are prepared to sacrifice our way of life (which is what we are now losing) and prepared to risk nuclear conflict with a major military power so that - at one end of the European map - a country has the right to join the EU whilst at the other end of it our nation - which voted to LEAVE the EU with a mandate far more authentic than Ukraine's - is forced to remain under threat by the EU of reactivating a band of pro EU terrorists (the IRA.)
Ukraine is the ultimate Red team vs Blue team shit but with weapons and gas lines instead of powerless fake-democracy wankers throwing bread rolls at each other in the subsidised Westminster dinner debating club.
There are good Ukrainian lads dead. There are good Russian lads dead. And it's Ukraine being levelled, not Russia.
Whoever is 'winning' (China, methinks) it's not Ukraine.
Oh. And Whoops Apocalypse is still a possibility whereas it wasn't before Biden's America started to stir things up in 2014.
https://www.dailymail.co.uk/debate/article-11200247/Peter-Hitchens-Head-State-not-politicians-true-defender-freedom.html
Is King Charles up to this standard of thought ?
I was a critic of The Queen not so long ago but, with age, have come to understand the narrow path that she had to tread in order to avoid gifting the republicans their chance - she did well against devious players such as Blair and Mandelson, she confounded them.
I am an atheist but appreciate the value in adopting a religion (the most moderate and self aligning one) in order to be able to say "The debate ends at this red line."
Jan said...
I agree Thud. So far she's doing OK and she was certainly thrown in at the deep end. I've a theory the Queen held on until someone sensible was in post.
12:14 pm
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Quite. The thought of Johnson bloviating endlessly on the death of HM to awful to bear. Charles also smart in talking about William and Kate in their new positions in the monarchy, but just wishing "Harry and Meghan" well in the new ventures far away. Or to reword, fuck off and don't come back. All in all though I hold no candle for Charles who lacks both the smarts and the with of his late Mum. Shame it wouldn't have been Anne to take over (the son Philip never had as some wag once said. Correctly) The guy who put in our wonderful windproof fence a while back - his wife is Anne's PA and general factotum, and reports she's great to work for.
Anonymous Anonymous said...
What are the benefits, Clive? I can see that employers like cheap labour, any others?
People vote with their feet against immigration, which is why outside every market town there's a ring of new estates.
2:13 pm
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Sure true in Somerset, tho' happily Mells in the private estate of the Earl of Oxford and Asquith, so we are not blighted by estates dumped on the edge of the village, with an architecture bearing no resemblance to the local vernacular.
That said, there are virtually NO immigrants in Somerset as far as I can see; we are still splendidly monocultural.
The NHS
The National Harm Service. Lils having fought off her "6 to 9 months to live" out of the blue prognosis from her **** of an Oncologist (switched immediately to another, far more sympathetic one) for cancer, by means of having gone Carnivore a while back and with the assistance of a couple of of the piste treatments, and indeed I, have sworn to have nothing to do with them anymore except in the case of trauma, which they are good at. Orthopaedics the only other are I trust them, having has three excellent mechanical interventions a while back.
The GP I saw a while back for a PSA check (happily very good)was clearly out of his mind. I guess I would be, working a 3 day week for a huge salary and not seeing any patients for 2 years. Phew. Tough
JP
Blogger Sobers said...
"Would definitely agree on the NHS. Having recent experience of NHS provision (where I’m “in the system” and it would be too disruptive to make alternative arrangements, but that tells you a lot, right there, about how the NHS, cough, delivers) and private medical services, it’s hard to believe both can be given the same label as “healthcare”."
You don't think having an additional 1m people to care for inside a year might be at least partly responsible for why the NHS is such a pile of sh*t?
10:49 pm
=================================================================
Had the NHS and the government issued clear advice on simple measures to combat ANY respiratory virus - Vitamins C, D, Zinc and Quercitin - and used the know early prophylactics of Ivermectin and Hydrochloroquine (I have a CDC document from 2005 in which Dr. Faustus states CLEARLY that Chloroquinine is a safe and very effective prophylactic for SARS) those million people could have stayed at home.
But then, Pfeizers shares were bottoming before Covid, and were there beezer profits to be made if THEY got to deal with this. Oh boy, yes indeed. In fact, one of the prefaces to their vast data dump NOTES how badly they needed new income,
And now with boosters they have a permanent income stream. And blood on their hands. The vaccines have caused MORE deaths and ADRs than ALL other such in the past 30 years and excess mortality is spiralling her, there and everywhere. Nothing to see here, the media reports, move along please....
https://dailysceptic.org/2022/09/10/400-doctors-and-professionals-declare-international-medical-crisis-due-to-covid-vaccine-injuries-and-deaths/
"Over 400 doctors, scientists and professionals from more than 34 countries this morning declared an international medical crisis due to “diseases and death associated with the ‘COVID-19 vaccines'”.
Launched at a press conference on Saturday, September 10th, the declaration states: “We are currently witnessing an excess in mortality in those countries where the majority of the population has received the so-called ‘COVID-19 vaccines’. To date, this excess mortality has neither been sufficiently investigated nor studied by national and international health institutions.”
It continues:
The large number of sudden deaths in previously healthy young people who were inoculated with these ‘vaccines’ is particularly worrying, as is the high incidence of miscarriages and perinatal deaths which have not been investigated.
A large number of adverse side effects, including hospitalisations, permanent disabilities and deaths related to the so-called ‘COVID-19 vaccines’, have been reported officially.
The registered number has no precedent in world vaccination history."
As I was saying....
https://www.zerohedge.com/covid-19/new-ivermectin-study-demonstrates-92-percent-reduction-covid-19-mortality-rate
jp
@ there are virtually NO immigrants in Somerset as far as I can see
You need to get out more.
anon - hence house prices in Bruton. You might also mention the Cotswolds, Exmoor, the Dales and the Lakes. The middle and upper classes also vote with their feet.
The real test for our new king (and our new PM to give approval for ) will be weather he comes up to Cumberland to open the proposed coking coal pit at Whitehaven
"Whoever is 'winning' (China, methinks) it's not Ukraine."
The US, energy self-sufficient, is selling LNG and lovely weapons to us, and closing down our industries, though that's mostly self inflicted. Third time in 100 years that the US has defeated Germany, only this time Biden is Jim Jones and Europeans are the People's Temple devotees.
China are doing well, but the idea that they will abandon Russia is a pipe dream, as they know they are next after Russia.
It must be said the Brits abandoned their Empire with good grace, can't see the Septics doing the same. They want to keep the unipolar world of the 1990s, when Russia was there for the looting and China was (in Western eyes) also there for looting, cheap manufacturing and selling. I remember some Chinese bigwigs touring my financial services employer and how the top brass looked forward to expansion.
"If we only get 3% of the market, that's x squillion quid!"
Anonymous Anonymous said...
@ there are virtually NO immigrants in Somerset as far as I can see
You need to get out more.
8:58 am
================================
No! Frome, our nearest Market town, VERY few and many of the Poles have returned home
Just spent a week in Wells. Struggling to recall seeing ONE POC.
Sorry.
Where in Somerset do you live, out of interest.
2011 census (full details not available from the last one)
http://www.somersetintelligence.org.uk/census-ethnicity.html
"94.6% of Somerset’s population are ‘White British’. This proportion is typical of that seen in Somerset’s neighbouring local authorities but much higher than the England and Wales average (80.5%). Somerset’s non-‘White British’ residents tend to be concentrated in and around the county’s principal towns"
Colonists tend to concentrate in the medium-to-large cities. It's easier to find some kind of housing, however poor quality, in a city. Also, birds of a feather flock together, largely because of language problems.
A single Kurd who speaks little or no English will find life difficult in Somerset. In Middlesbrough, there are plenty of other Kurds to show him (or her) the ropes.
Don
Hospital pharmacy taking 24-48 hours to provide medication. Form filling of data already captured taking priority over severe pain management.
In almost all organisations trying to go from premium to low cost but good fails. This is my sense of what was happening here.
Al
Just to clarify my apparent appointed position as a "troll", I don't believe Russia is "winning", rather I believe we are all losing.
And I offer this as another example of just how bad our elected leaders are and how unwilling they are to simply face the facts:
https://www.euractiv.com/section/energy/news/as-eu-is-asked-to-mobilise-all-available-energy-anger-at-germany-grows/
Right on cue, some American general has been saying on Twitter that the Ukrainian counter offensive is the start of a process to de-imperialize Russia. So if you were Russian, you could be forgiven for thinking that the US/NATO plan is to expel the Russians from Ukraine (and Crimea), then carry on and break up Russia itself. From a Russian standpoint, this is an existential fight that they cannot afford to lose.
Putin has been quite restrained so far, which is one reason why the current Ukrainian offensive is succeeding. But eventually, he will have to commit more forces, or be replaced by someone else who will.
Reports on Telegram are that multiple power stations and district heating plants are being destroyed across Ukraine tonight. So it seems that Putin has finally decided to end the softly-softly approach. Well done Team Biden!
Putin should go home,
That’s all he has to do.
The longer the war, the higher the likelihood some general he sacked will instead take his battalion to Moscow and depose him.
Putin is hoping the winter will save his sorry invasion. Because the West will collapse without his gas.
He may not make the winter.
Truss, so far, has the awkwardness of Gordon Brown down perfectly. Hoping that's not a sign.
King Brian has made all the right noises, here's hoping he keeps to them. It's got to be highly frustrating keeping schtum on some things.
And Ukraine, well, Putin is in a world of trouble. Kadyrov, the Owen Jones of Chechnya, is starting to distance himself, mil-bloggers going nuts, dissatisfaction making it into the public sphere, China starting to mock him... Now is probably a good time to start planning his retirement before it's planned for him.
Clive - The point of sub-tax threshold immigration both legal and illegal is that the global corporations are slowly turning their backs on the over-paid and under productive West. They are transitioning to new markets and need their new - post Chinese/Indian industrial revolution work/slave force - in place.
That's where we fit in now.
The fools in Westminster are either in on it or are convinced that 'economic growth' (a euphemism for packing 'em in) is the only way forward. Japan sees it otherwise and they are handling the new world order a lot better than we are.
There is nothing *modern* about modern slavery. There is nothing *modern* about the Uberisation of the whole workforce, the abandonment of work pensions, pay and conditions of service... in fact those practices were only recent and what is called *modern* or Uber is an arrangement that went back to the beginning of civilisation.
Why are £40k a year 30 year-old professionals stuck in bedsits ? Often a partitioned house that was built for a milkman or bus driver and family with stay-at-home wife ?
Neighbour's son, done two years in an NHS hospital post qualification, has buggered off to work and live in New Zealand. He says only 4 of his qualifying cohort remain working in this country. We are now Uganda.
And should you wondering how Charlie boy will differ from his Mum, this short clip from the Accession ceremony makes it very, very clear...
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=uHqgvWivkyY
Jeremy - More Queenie than the Queen !
---------
O/T but interesting about family protocol.
Brother's body is with the pathologist and we are awaiting its release. We have kept everyone abreast of the situation.
A cousin oop North decides to phone the police and start digging around about what the delay is. (He's barely seen my brother in 30 years.)
He relays the information to Mum via my aunt thusly "A badly decomposed body was found in wasteground and tests are being conducted."
Well. That's nothing that we didn't know already but what if he had found new information ?
Those were words I did not want said to Mum and is why we have family hierarchy in such situations, Wife knows first, them Mum, then me.
Not cousin !
I have sent a rocket via my Aunt and told her that this must never happen again.
Imagine if my cousin had died in similar circumstances and his wife or sister found out I'd been contacting the police and relaying information to his Mum.
What a cunt.
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