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Reply | Stoke City v Swansea City : Match day thread
at 16:59 15 Feb 2025
Have to feel angry for the Swans fans who travelled all the way to the Potteries to see this kind of performance. This has got to be the weakest team we have fielded since relegation. Tymon put in a shift, but I struggle to pick out anybody else worth a mention. Eom in particular does not look suited to this league. That DoF appointment looks likely to take us down if it means that Williams stays in charge, |
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Reply | QPR
at 21:43 14 Feb 2025
4-0 at the moment. Jerry Yates has just missed an absolute sitter. I wonder if he will find his level next season. |
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Reply | Which teams will go down?
at 21:04 14 Feb 2025
Yep, we are in the situation now where this amounts to things going our way. |
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Reply | Keir Starmer today
at 20:57 14 Feb 2025
I said there were issues with "parties and lying", and by the latter meant lying more generally, which includes Pincher. There was no doubt that Johnson has character defects and managed affairs ineptly (what I called chaotic management). I am not a fan and do see myself as defending him. I said he was a clown and would extend that to chancer. it is just that I see his problem as general ineptness rather than calculated action to achieve some overarching illicit goal. And yes, at the end the chorus of criticism from the ones I mentioned spread to other factions who had their own eyes on power. Anyway, the thread has been skilfully turned to what Johnson did a couple of years ago, and it should really be about what is happening under Starmer now. Looking at the BBC News today, things seem to be getting worse for Reeves. I doubt that this will develop into ""Expenses-Gate" or "Handbag-Gate", but lots of little fibs add up - as they did for Boris. |
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Reply | Keir Starmer today
at 19:22 14 Feb 2025
I don't think sections of the Party turned on Boris Johnson because he lied to the House about the parties. Rather the parties provided an opportunity for those (mainly on the "one nation" side of the party) who had opposed Brexit, did not like the tactics Johnson used to get past Parliament's attempts to block it, resented the action he took to discipline them, and did not like the way No 10 was being run. There was also the fallout from Dominic Cummings' sacking and his subsequent attempts to damage Johnson.
If Partygate was not about parties and lying then what was it about? What is Johnson supposed to have done that achieved an illicit benefit. Pincher resigned because of alleged drunken groping, and yes, he could have been sacked more quickly. Paterson had been doing paid consultancy on the side for Randox Laboratories and Lynne's Country Foods, and was alleged to have tried to influence ministers and the Food Standards Agency to the advantage of those companies. Some of his approaches were about alleged shortcomings in food or milk quality that Paterson was claiming his companies' products could help mitigate. However, this did not result in any new contracts for the two companies or get the FSA to change course. Yes, Johnson was then at fault by trying to get the rules of the Commons Standards Committee changed rather than quickly sacking Paterson, but he had to back down so that nothing actually changed. Some said Johnson's problem was that he did not like sacrificing ministers or special advisors when they came under media attack. What I cannot really see is how you join up all the dots to link all these things together in some overall scam or plan to gain a political advantage on a particular issue. It seems to me more about chaotic management and an arrogant disregard of the views of rivals as well as opponents. What the critics end up alleging is a general lack of integrity, but no single focused scandal except Partygate. [Post edited 14 Feb 19:30]
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Reply | Small Boat Crossings
at 16:42 14 Feb 2025
Changes in visas for dependants of students seem to be a big part of this. The surprising thing is that although overseas student numbers rose sharply in the couple of years after COVID-19, the reduced number this year isn't much lower than intakes in the period before the pandemic. I was surprised to see that overseas applications for Welsh pre-registration nursing degree courses actually rose this year (though admittedly overseas students have never been a big part of the student intake in that subject). I'd say that the pegging of the UK home student fee for some years is also a big factor affecting university finances. |
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Reply | Keir Starmer today
at 16:20 14 Feb 2025
I said clown, you say chancer. I will swap if you like. I did not mean to draw any line between the two things. |
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Reply | Keir Starmer today
at 16:06 14 Feb 2025
We have to disagree, I hope not too violently. I think the thing that would beef up your argument is evidence that Tory cabinet members benefited directly from dodgy PPE contracts, which would constitute serious malfeasance and harden my already negative view of a Tory Government that I did not vote for in the election. The point of contrast on the Labour side would be Siddiq and her family who are alleged to be involved in a £4 billion contract scandal and associated money laundering (see other thread). In my view the more minor indiscretions like freebies, parties, misuse of social media and dodgy CVs look marginally worse under Labour than under the Tories, and as I suggested seem more clearly calculated to bring electoral advantage, whereas Boris was just trying to cover up his disorganised management of Number 10. Both sides may have said things in the House that are untrue. I notice that you say you never voted for the Labour Party (a Party of which I was once a card-carrying member), but you seem to be its foremost apologist on these threads. I seem to remember you characterising the incoming government as the adults who had entered the room. That is the real joke. |
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Reply | Small Boat Crossings
at 07:39 14 Feb 2025
My take is that this is not an intrinsic problem for all Western countries, but comes about because of certain economic policies in certain countries. The UK's educational and training infrastructure is stronger than that of the developing countries whose professionals we steal away, but we have chosen not to allocate resources to expand it. Our problem in the NHS is the result of decisions by successive government to limit numbers of doctors, nurses and allied health professionals in training. It is not the case that we did not have enough capable young people of our own to train. More generally in other sectors, there has been a willingness to allow business to import skilled labour rather than incur the costs of training, or in areas like social care and agriculture unwillingness to pay wages that make work attractive to persons already here.
If immigration was the answer to labour shortages, we might expect that after a period of completely unprecedented population growth linked to immigration, then labour shortages would no longer exist. However, we seem to rely on a kind of never-ending conveyor belt where each new cohort of migrants do the unattractive jobs for a while and then become disinclined to continue the work.
I'm not against the idea of attracting "the brightest and the best" as the rhetoric goes, but I think we should have the internal capacity to meet our core needs. Isn't it striking how worries about exporting too much skilled labour - the "brain drain" - in the 1960s and 70s have given way to worries about never being able to manage without immigration? [Post edited 14 Feb 7:42]
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Reply | Keir Starmer today
at 07:05 14 Feb 2025
Boris was a clown, but a few staff parties where he may have popped in for 10 minutes, was really about his lack of managerial grip, slap-dash ways and casual rule bending. The things that are coming out now with the present government seem to involve a higher degree of calculated dishonesty aimed to bring about political advantage. Siddiqi's case is different again, with the possibility that very significant financial malfeasance is involved. |
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Reply | Small Boat Crossings
at 20:03 13 Feb 2025
I suppose in those two country cases we identify most but not all. As we have seen recently, a few Albanians who we do identify manage to persuade immigration tribunals that they should not be returned on various grounds. Successive governments have been trying to build u a list of generally safe countries for expedited returns and we have current agreements for returns with 24. However, refugee NGOs like the Refugee Council argue that there are no countries where an individual may not be at risk of persecution, so legal cases can involve nationals even from these 24 countries with agreements. In addition to these, there are certain countries where it is deemed the UK does not need an agreement, and also countries where we once had an agreement that has lapsed. And some countries such as Iran or Afghanistan are considered too dangerous for returns. I found the document in the link below that gives information on some of the different categories, but which stops short of providing a list of problem countries who don't accept our return requests.
https://www.ein.org.uk/news/new-commons-library-research-briefing-uk-migrant-ret |
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Reply | Small Boat Crossings
at 15:52 13 Feb 2025
The problem with some of the suggestions above is that they don't say what we should do with rejected asylum claimants who have concealed their origin country or come from countries that will not accept returns. That is the problem that Rwanda was supposed to deal with. How do we fill that gap? |
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Reply | Labour's last hope?
at 13:27 13 Feb 2025
No, I am afraid you have this wrong. "Progress" was formed in 1996 to support policy development for Blair, and is basically a New Labour faction within the party, which as you suggest stands in opposition to the harder left Momentum group (Corbyn etc). New Labour has often been criticised as representing a takeover of traditional Labour (yet another faction) by middle class, and particularly public sector professional supporters. Blue Labour was created in the early 2000s by Glasman and others who opposed both these tendencies. It argued that Labour had moved away from its old working class base and was dismissive of that base's culture and patriotic values. Blue Labour is pro-Brexit, anti-mass immigration , tough on crime, and against government by woke lawyers such as Hermer. It looks towards Karl Polanyi (The Great Transformation) rather than Karl Marx for inspiration. Here is some blurb about he movement,
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Blue_Labour
If you read what Glasman said in the OP link you'll see that he is probably as critical of present government policies as you are. Many years ago Ed Miliband was an early supporter, but is widely perceived to have offered false promises on which he failed to deliver.
I was once attracted to Blue Labour's analysis of where Labour had gone wrong, but am not so keen on the "faith" aspect of the movement. |
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Reply | Swansea City v Sheffield Wednesday : Match day thread
at 21:30 12 Feb 2025
Why when you have a free kick wide in a good position for a cross, would you pass back to a worse position where the cross then unsurprisingly goes straight through to the keeper? Do we have a set piece coach? |
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Reply | Swansea City v Sheffield Wednesday : Match day thread
at 21:13 12 Feb 2025
Darling comes up with his 2nd suicidal pass of the game, which this time is punished. I was thinking that the back four was okay, and that the weak links were Vipotnik, Peart-Harris, Eom, Fulton, and probably Ronald, but others also have a mistake in them. |
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Reply | Swansea City v Sheffield Wednesday : Match day thread
at 20:21 12 Feb 2025
The Sky commentator has our number when he says we are content to play "safe football", timid low movement of the ball, and does not test the opponents. All too ready to pass backwards as usual. No shots on goal. |
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