Liz Truss ousted as UK prime minister, outlived by online lettuce The analogy was first drawn by august finance journal The Economist, which said the shelf-life of a lettuce was longer than Liz Truss's period with any actual political power as British Prime Minister, after she "blew up her own government with a package of unfunded tax cuts and energy-price guarantees on September 23." Then …
Is he though? Raving fruit loops like Doris and Re-smog and whoever that guy who was hanging around in the lobby of The House yesterday might be very vocally supporting him, but he needs the support of 100 MPs to get on the ballot, and the word is (or so I have read) that he may well have fewer than 25 MPs supporting him.
Of course, if he does get on the ballot, and somehow get re-elected, there are also rumours that there is a group of MPs who would split from the Conservative Party if this were to happen. That would lose the Conservatives their majority in the House of Commons, so they'd be trying to operate as a minority government. I can't see any path there that doesn't lead to a general election, and the Tories are currently polling at 30 or more points behind Labour, the latest poll to be published puts them on 14% to Labour's 53%.
Of course there are always provisions; that poll was commissioned by GB news, which is hardly a reliable and unbiased outfit, so it could well be open to people gaming it, and Labour historically have been over-represented in opinion polls compared to the result when votes are actually cast. However, the meta-polling is more reliable, and almost as damning, and that would be one hell of a new-leader bounce for the Tories not to be all but wiped out in the next election. The most recent predictions from Electoral Calculus have the SNP as the party in opposition, with the Tories in third place. This is, of course, an artefact of the appalling first-past-the-post system, but the Tories only have themselves to blame for continuing to support (and promote) that anti-democratic system.
Truss's approval ratings might have been in the drain, but Johnson's weren't exactly positive when he was forced out. The public reaction is much more likely to be "once bitten, twice shy," than "oh goody, more Boris please".
Of course, there are still some crazies about parroting "bring Boris back". You see them pop up on the comments on YouGov polls (themselves a right-wing venture, created by a Tory MP), to a flurry of downvotes and very sparse up-votes. Shouting it loudly doesn't make it public opinion, just like chanting "high growth economy" doesn't make one appear from thin air, as Truss has discovered. Time to put away the magical thinking, methinks, and follow the examples of what works; grow an economy by strategically investing during a recession, not by cutting taxes for the rich, and swiping the ground out from under the feet of the working poor, who are the actual foundation of a functioning economy (because they spend their earnings on essentials, and don't extract the money from the economy by squirrelling it away in tax havens).
We're due a Labour government soon. Probably not soon enough, and they'll have a hell of a job to repair the damage 12 years of Tory austerity cuts, pork barrels, corruption and incompetence have done, but hopefully things will stop getting worse.
The only glint of light here, is that those who have screwed up so badly are the hardcore brexiters, and with any luck their demise will also signal the end of that shit-show as well.
@Loyal Commenter
"We're due a Labour government soon. Probably not soon enough, and they'll have a hell of a job to repair the damage 12 years of Tory austerity cuts, pork barrels, corruption and incompetence have done, but hopefully things will stop getting worse."
You have a lot of faith there. I cant see labour undoing any of those except the 'austerity' which existed in name only so business as usual (more spending). I dont see any of them offering anything of any good.
Not to nitpick, but she was quoting the supposed statement from one of the Tory whips during that final fracking fracas. She says so, too. A lot of the Twitter comments also seem to miss that (except those who actually speak German and so go the full context).
Despite living in Germany a while, I still can’t gauge how offensive English swear words are to Germans. Certainly they don’t baulk at f and s words in songs on the radio.
And ‘shitstorm’ seems to be widely accepted and it always makes me chuckle when I see it as a huge headline on the front page of a serious paper :)
My experience is that expletives in foreign languages rarely feel as offensive as ones in your native language, it is hard to pick up the emotional reaction.
Even more as there are different ideas of how offensive things are internationally, the English speaking world find procreation more repelling than excretion (it seems), in Danish or German not so much.
i once worked on a committee with a German. He was married to a Canadian and thus spoke English well. He had a strong German accent over laid with a veneer of Canadian English. He also well understood English idiom - those who didn't know him were always surprised by "Ve Vill give them ze whole nine yards!"
"Tories, though, are not unrivelled in their incompetence. Just to name one Corbyn "
Corbyn was never in government - that may be a good or bad thing, depending on your point of view - but anything he said or did is irrelevant compared to the imbecilic (if I'm being generous) or malevolent (if I'm not) activities of the tories.
"Corbyn did achive one thing - without him Boris wouldn't have achived such a majority."
There is an alternate viewpoint that highlights the only real difference between 2017 (when Labour made gains) and 2019 (when they lost loads. Despite achieving a higher percentage of the vote than in 2010 & 2015 they won fewer seats).
Seems the shadow Brexit Secretary decided that Remain would be an option on a 2nd referendum. The result was that 46 of the 47 English seats that Labour lost, the so-called Red Wall, had all voted Leave.
But I guess as party leader Corbyn should take the blame, mainly for not telling the shadow BS to STFU.
Daft really as history has shown that the shadow BS is happy to renege on any commitments made during an election!
As a former resident in one of those red wall seats that fell… Racist Britain is alive and well. The folks that put a lettuce in charge over Rishi demonstrated that, as did the red wall on the Brexit vote.
Labour shortages used to be addressed by immigration. Tory voters have made this place so unappealing and offensive to immigrants, so funnily enough, we now have a shortage.
If moving labour from useless red tape and administrative jobs into productive primary and secondary industries is the goal (It should be, to improve productivity) we have to do an awful long way to go to undo 40 years of the School of Thatcher.
This post has been deleted by its author
The Conservative Party have been the governing party of Britain for the greater part of the last century:
During this period the country has fallen in stature, both comparative and absolute, by virtually every criterion of measurement which can be applied
- Sleeve notes to Alan Clark's The Tories
"The problem is that there are no competent leaders to vote for."
That lettuce is worth a punt. It beat cheesemonger Liz. Which admittedly doesn't say much. And I'm fairly sure the lettuce won't royally fuck up the economy or our cheese exports within days of becoming prime minister.
That lettuce is likely to be far smarter than the combined intelligence(?) of the Tory party.
You may be surprised to hear it, but lettuces do very well as a winter crop, as long as they're protected from a hard frost and the ground isn't frozen, and if you'd planted a seedling a month ago, it would be doing much better than any Tory MP right now...
Which reminds me, I really do need to sow some for this winter...
Great [sic] Britain
ObPedant: The name comes about not as a descriptive of some measure of power or influence but to distinguish it from 'Less Britain' (i.e Brittany).
And it's a name of great provenance, not something thought up in the last few centuries.
(Although the first use of the name was in 148CE by the historian Ptolemy - he calls the larger of the British Isles 'Great Britain' and Ireland he called 'Little Britain'. The Saxons were the ones who used the term with relation to Brittany. First use of the name as an official term was in 1474 - if one believes PikiWedia anyway..)
You are quite right: it is not just the prime minister or the conservative party that is the problem. The entire house of commons is a barrier to constructive government. Although the appropriate time is approaching, the problem with the Guy Fawkes solution is they would get replaced by more of the same. I propose replacing the lot with sortition. That way only 50% would be below average intelligence/competence/criminality/...
"The entire house of commons is a barrier to constructive government."
Really? That was Johnson's approach when unlawfully proroguing parliament to force through his dodgy activities. You're rathe rmissing the point of parliament, unless you think an actual dictatorship is a good thing?
Not really, Johnson took advantage of the myriad weaknesses of the current system, primary amongst them is that the system is based on unwritten rules, trust and honour
It's primary flaws are that it is elected by FPTP and not PR, so is not representative, artificially amplifying small majorities, and failing to represent significant minorities, that the rules are either based on convention, or are arcane (such as not being able to call another member a liar even when they are clearly lying), and that it is fundamentally an adversarial system, and not one of cooperative government, as you would get in a coalition of parties in a PR-elected system. This leads to the system of Whips where MPs are expected to vote along party lines, and not in the interests of their constituents, or the country, so there's no real representation at all of public opinion in parliamentary votes, with the results pretty much dictated by the leader of the party in power.
Let's not get onto the "upper house" and how anti-democratic that is.
There are plenty of parliamentary systems around the world that do not suffer the same problems as ours. It is only our own insular parochialism that prevents us from learning from them.
No you dont need to go that far.
Simply ban anyone who is (or studied to be) a lawyer, union rep, political scientist (gah i feel dirty just using the term), or who's only work experience involves working for a political party, union, an MP's office or a multi-million dollar family business. It might also be good to ban anyone that studied at Oxbridge (or uses the term "read at so and so college" when referring to going to a university), or who went to Eton. But that might be going too far as occasionally good one's pop out (e.g. Ian Hislop).
Maybe then you would get some people in who actually know how to be adults, compromise and come up with solutions, rather than only knowing how to argue vehemently and come up with soundbites.
Which is pretty much what having a PPE degree (which both Sunak and Truss have and which also seems to be a common denomiator among the various data fetishists at MI5/6/GCHQ).
It seems to give them the skills to argue that black is white and the arrogance to believe they are always right.
Even when they are not.
The Johnson's support for Truss has been fully justified.
Note how quickly he cancelled his "Holiday" to return to the UK. Not exactly the behaviour of someone who has totally walked away from wanting the top spot.
Yes, PPE is a simply a degree in arguing the toss. BoJo studied the Classics which means he’s well versed in all the finer points of Greek & Roman politics - where the knives weren't metaphorical!
Read his parliamentary speeches as leader, they displayed utter self confidence*, he really is expecting to find a way back to the top but obviously didn't expect Truss to burn down the economy a week into the job proper, so the question now is will he jump at the chance or play the long game party unity card and wait until a more favourable moment be a loyal(ish) supporter for the good of the country.
*to the point of not giving a flying one what almost anyone else thinks about him or his personal actions, this underpinned his not fully grasping that while the British public will put up with a lot in their leaders (if the job is being done well enough) they don't like hypocrites.
From the late great Douglas Adams:
“The major problem—one of the major problems, for there are several—one of the many major problems with governing people is that of whom you get to do it; or rather of who manages to get people to let them do it to them.
“To summarize: it is a well-known fact that those people who must want to rule people are, ipso facto, those least suited to do it.
“To summarize the summary: anyone who is capable of getting themselves made President should on no account be allowed to do the job.”
The man had a lot of political wisdom:
“On its world, the people are people. The leaders are lizards. The people hate the lizards and the lizards rule the people.""Odd," said Arthur. "I thought you said it was a democracy."
"I did," said Ford. "It is."
"So," said Arthur, hoping he wasn't sounding ridiculously obtuse, "why don't the people get rid of the lizards?"
"It honestly doesn't occur to them," said Ford. "They've all got the vote, so they all pretty much assume that the government they voted in more or less approximates to the government they want."
"You mean they actually vote for the lizards?"
"Oh yes," said Ford with a shrug, "of course."
"But," said Arthur, going in for the big one again, "why?"
"Because if they didn't vote for a lizard," said Ford, "the wrong lizard might get in.”
My take at a solution is to choose members of parliament by lottery:
- anyone eligible must submit a form saying they agree to drop their current activities for 4 or 5 years
- no need for political parties, no funding for political parties.
- the group chosen decides on a leadership committee
- all members get an office and a budget, and can work on whatever preoccupies them
- including hiring auditors and running tribunals
- members can pool budgets on a year-by-year basis
- the role of government is like a board of directory, they're not there to take decisions
- the civil service takes decisions under guidance of the leadership committee.
MAKES decisions.
You can take a decision only if you're offered more than one of them. If you're any good you make a decision out of original thoughts.
The connotation is that the people offering the menu of decisions really haven't finished the job so I had to take the least bad decision they offered.
I blame Tony Blair for this construction finding its way into UK politics.
This post has been deleted by its author
At it seems you get a £115,000 annual grant for life for being an ex-prime minister, there may be a lot of candidates without requiring a gun.
== Bring us Dabbsy back! ==
This makes me think that Truss is smarter than Johnson. Brexit is "done", the Prime Minister Election is "done" and we're just moving forward, the past is past again. This illustrates that getting things done is not the same as getting things working (yes the icon is only a joke).
It's a little more subtle than that.
The Chairman calls on the PM and simply explains that (effectively) the back benchers, who make up the actual majority in the House are withdrawing their labour. The PM is now in charge of a party in name only.
Theoretically a Conservative PM (and there is no equivalent in the Labour party) could say "F**k you I'm staying till the election comes round" but all of them so far have been either actual human beings (or close enough to one) to tender their resignation and leave with a bit of dignity, possibly even with a tear in their eye.
More quietly leaving the front door open on the house whose mortage you can no longer afford rather than being dragged out by a couple of baliffs.
Parliamentary democracy, any incumbent PM is expendable and can be replaced in short order.
Should any PM ignore their own parties calls to go a general vote in the house can remove them and give the sitting majority a short time to pick a new leader or force a general election.
Bottom line - In the UK, the PM runs the executive branch of government at the behest of parliament.
However the last 4-5 prime ministers lacked the ability between them to run a bath
I think May mostly suffered from the Major Syndrome - usually explained as having a Cabinet that hated you and each other..
Not at all.
Who within the Conservative party voted Truss (and before her the Johnson) in?
Old codgers.
And what thing are most rich old codgers not very good at?
A simple yet effective filter which (along with the 100 signature minimum rule) should limit the opportunites for the more Ahole end of the party from having any chance of selection.
Then rather Boris. He's pompous and basking in the limelight, but lazy and doesn't get anything done. Badenoch (1) is a far-right zealot who would, like Truss, go over the top to please the lower half of the Daily Mail readers within the first week (this time on "security" rather than the economy.
(1) Who makes up those names? We have an attorney called Suella, somebody trying to show her "bad" credentials called Badenough, and a Cleverly who isn't overly so. If we are indeed characters in an alien soap opera, it's rather badly written.
And as someone pointed out "Gutto Bebb" is not in fact a henchman of Jabba the Hutt but an actual Conservative political commentator.
As they say "Politics makes for strange bedfellows."
TBH I keep thinking of her as "Bad Enoch"
If an election isn’t called now then democracy in this country is well and truly dead (at least for the time being), and it’s been looking suspiciously nailed to its perch in this country ever since Brexit.
It seems that we get whoever the tabloids (including that honorary tabloid, The Maily Telegraph) want us to get, and the majority of the population is too bovine and slow on a diet of social media to question the idiocy of voting Conservative or supporting whatever Farage is doing these days.
There are lots of ways to demand a general election. None of those has any legal and factual weight though. Other than, perhaps, mass-storming the parliament and 'asking' the honourable gentle-men and gentle-wemen to consider immediate election. But that would be decried as 'undemocratic' and 'blackmail' and 'peasants' revolt 2.0' and Ben the Wallace would have to declare martial law and proclaim himself the Lord Protector of the Nukes and Minor Systems. Which, he appears not to be inclined to do. Well, I've run out of ideas, and it's not even Friday yet. Or is it?
If the new government (led by whoever Prime Minister) followed roughly the 2019 Tory manifesto then I would be content to not have a GE. If they do not then a GE should be mandatory.
(I will accept changes mandated by unforseeable events like Covid & Putin's war.)
I pity satire writers - they must be struggling to keep up and find that events are more surreal than they could invent.
Nonsense. Democracy in the UK is doing its job, as proven by the fact that Truss is gone.
Compare her with Trump, who held his job for a full term despite doing far worse.
There's a lot of misconceptions about what elections are for. You don't vote for a set of policies or ideas, because everyone knows that what politicians say they'll do has only coincidental correspondence with what they actually end up doing. (And that's not, or at least not just, because they were lying, it's because you don't know until you get there what the real constraints are.)
What you vote for is a person whom you think will do the best job of promoting the sort of things you agree with. It's a contest of trust, that's all. And at the last election, the British people put their trust in the wunch of bankers known as the Tories. (And frankly I'm still pretty sure they were right to do so. Remember what the alternative was.)
If "Boris" comes back I'll have a party, as it's the final nail in their coffin.
I know what the members want, but it doesn't match what the voters want. It's a lesson that Labour learned with Corbyn, and it looks like the Conservatives have yet to learn it.
The other lesson that people are finally learning is that "Reality has a liberal bias" -- Prof. Brian Cox
Indeed. A popular passtime in Syria, and Iraq, and I'm sure Turkey and Iran too if they had any spare gas. Because.....
Their ba***ds.
How dare they think that just because they are one people split across 4 nations borders due to boundaries they had no say in the writing of (and whose lands sit on top of quite a lot of oil) they think they should have any say in what happens to themselves or the oil they are sitting on top of.
The audacity
You'd think they were human beings.....
If "Boris" comes back I'll have a party, as it's the final nail in their coffin.
I know what the members want, but it doesn't match what the voters want...
Does that mean that what the voters wanted in 2019 shouldn't have been taken away from them?
I know we're not supposed to vote directly for our Prime Ministers (unless we're in their constituencies) but if ever a UK GE was a 'personality' contest then 2019 was it.
Of course, voters change their minds from time to time but claiming to know that what members want doesn't match what voters want is a bit of a leap in the dark.
My personal opinion is that Bojo might still be an attractive option to the voters who effectively put him in charge in 2019. I don't like that as an idea but it is my 2p opinion.
@Disgusted Of Tunbridge Wells
"They're going to have a stroke when Boris comes back."
I dont know how that would balance for my opinion. Early Boris showed some promise but later on my opinion wasnt so positive. Yet watching the shrieking and crying could be quite amusing.
This post has been deleted by its author
Tim Worstall? The UKIP press officer and failed UKIP candidate? Oh very balanced.
So no longer pandering to rightwing confirmation bias equals a shift left? Okaaaaay. I guess if you are out on the edge of the right that could be your perception.
Onthe other hand, glad to see a Conservative voter owning this shitshow.
@codejunky
Yes of course, but it's worse in a two party country where everything is either or.
In most countries, countries with several parties you have a center and a center left or right (most people) and then the more or less far right or far left.
This represents the people (any country) a lot better than the either or system still in use in some countries, sadly.
Also it creates coalition governments and as the Wiki points out.
"A 2001 World Bank study found that parliamentary systems are associated with less corruption."
Before lockdown, the hard at work journalistic brain cells were being lubricated by a Beer Delivery Robot...
https://www.theregister.com/2018/05/08/lester_eyes_locomotion/
So Devon had better watch out ?
Nuclear-armed Zomerzet on one side and pastie-armed Kernow on the other with only an incorrectly-applied cream tea scone to defend themselves with?
Kernow bys vikken!
(I should point out that my wife is from Plymouth and her paternal ancestry is all Cornish. Me - I'm the end result of the melting pot that is the Forest of Dean. It's amazing that I don't have six toes on each foot..)
>>GDP was smaller than that of Somerset.
>>Which may be a comforting thought. Until you consider what it implies about what it takes to become a nuclear power...
Don't give the minister for the middle ages (MP for North East Somerset, snoozer in chief of the house of commons, he of the passive agressive notes left on desks of people who weren't there - which of course they wouldn't read, not being there) any ideas!
"Using the 2022 estimates in the Wikipedia."
Netherlands GDP per capita in 2019 was 52,450 USD - 1018.01 billion US dollars GPD total
Russia's GDP per capita in 2019 was 11,580 USD - 1699.90 billion US dollars GDP total
Belgium's GDP per capita in 2019 was 46,120 USD - 599.88 billion US dollars GDP total
So Russia had about 82 billion more GDP in 2019 than Netherlands and Belgium. (source: tradingeconomics,com and world bank)
By 2021 this had changed a little, Belgium had a GDP per capita of 517678, Netherlands had 58061, and Russia had 10219.75. I suspect by now these figures for Russia are wildly out.
I wouldn't rely on wikipedia as a reliable source for much, let alone forecast estimates.
"Last I checked, North Korea's GDP was smaller than that of Somerset."
It seems to be about double that of Somerset.
Nth Korea $28.5 billion (nominal, 2016) $40 billion (PPP, 2015 est.)
Somerset In 2019, Somerset's economy was worth almost £12.1bn in Gross Value Added (GVA) terms...The Somerset economy has grown for the last seven consecutive years.
Clearly Somerset is catching up but has a ways to go yet :-)
Having said that, I'm not sure GDP is a useful measure when it comes to talking about a pariah state that has few trading partners and of whose internal markets we know so little.
Indeed. Truss's departure is a sad loss. :-(
To headline writers and anyone wanting to make snarky comments about the average age of Conservative party members. So many opportunites to take the p**s.
For those in the UK whose mortgages and energy bills went up (because UK electricity prices follow gas prices and what currency is gas bought in?) it's several weeks overdue.
TBF to mad Lizzie she did what she promised the Party members she was going to do and she had as much support as Iain Duncan Smith (who was one of her supporters) had when he was elected by the membership. IDS lasted IIRC about 18 months. Not very happy times for parliament back them either.
If you want an IT angle, here it is. The UK government is about to be run by the son-in-law of the founder, and husband of a major investor/owner, of Infosys the second largest IT company in India with a market cap of US$75bn, the worlds 160th most valuable company (by market cap)..
Rick Astley is still going strong...
An under appreciated fact of the UK system. It's called a recall petition.
You can't lead the Parliementary Party (of any party) if you don't have a seat in parliament.
IIRC it takes a petition of 10% of the people on the electorial roll.
The petition process can only take start though if the MP in question has been one of
convicted of an offence and received a custodial sentence (including a suspended sentence) or ordered to be detained, other than solely under mental health legislation
Or
barred from the House of Commons for 10 sitting days or 14 calendar days
Or
convicted of providing false or misleading information for allowance claims under the Parliamentary Standards Act 2009.
>You can't lead the Parliementary Party (of any party) if you don't have a seat in parliament.
Is that necessarily true? Pretty sure we have had Green Party leaders who weren't MPs
And with Alec Douglas-Home we nearly had a PM who wasn't an MP
You can be a party leader without being an MP, but in general, you can't be a PM if you are not an MP, ie the leader of the Parliamentary party, the one in power. But, under certain circumstances, the Monarch can invite someone, anyone, to try to form a government if there are issues such as a hung Parliament and little prospect of a coalition.
The problem with removing Orange Idiot in Chief early was that his replacement, that fucking nutcase Pence, was/is so bad that not even the conservative ultra-right old guard wanted him in the oval office, not even for a couple of months ...
Why do you think Cheeto hired him for the job? Made his spot in the White House bullet-proof for four years.
Probably most pissed off about the prospect being evicted from Chequers (by a lettuce, no less). She certainly seemed to spend more time there than in dingy No. 10 or indeed Parliament.
I'd vote that we turn Chequers into a lettuce farm managed by the national trust, open to the public and putting the land to good use growing lettuces for the nation instead of being a cushy Pile of laurels for the PM to sit on.
Ministers (and Prime Ministers) are supposed to SERVE the country, not pretend as if they own it!
She has two claims to fame.
First UK PM to serve under two monarchs
Shortest term UK PM EVAR!!
That last, along with so many other negative firsts will be what she's remembered for. If she's remembered at all. A modern day Lady Jane Grey? Who?... asks nearly everyone?
"First UK PM to serve under two monarchs"
Maybe I'm missing something fundamental here about the nature of UK's monarchy and/or parliament, but surely (a) every PM who was PM when the previous monarch died has served under 2 monarchs and (b) both the institutions of PM and the monarchy are old enough for there to have been several dead monarchs in the interim??
Indeed, a few minutes Googling reveals not only a certain W. Churchill who served under George 6 and Liz 2, but that Baldwin served under 3 monarchs (George 5, Edward 8, George 6) due to Ed 8's abdication
Not by a long shot — Churchill was PM under two monarchs (George VI. and Elizabeth II.), as was Baldwin (Edward VIII. and George VI.), Viscount Melbourne (William IV. and Victoria), the Duke of Wellington (George IV. and William IV.), the Earl of Liverpool (George III. and George IV.), and Walpole (George I. and George II.).
Podoum? PODIUM??
That is a LECTERN!
Bah, youngsters, believing everything they hear on Pointless.
Now, if they elect the lettuce to Number 10 (could do worse) and it gives a speech whilst plonked on top of the lectern, *then* it would a podium. Though, like an oyster, a lettuce has very few feet (if any). Oh, I'm taking my lettuce for walkies...
Mmmm, thank you Nurse. What a day it's been.
use the funds to expense stuff
AARRRGGGHHHHH !
We are not the US - you can't just convert a noun to a verb! It is an abomination of nature, the very negation of sound speech!
Yes, yes, it might be more brief than saying 'put stuff on expenses' but it's wrong as per Adam Hill "Liz Truss as PM just sounds wrong".
I'll shut up now. My G&T is calling..
As the great Bill Watterson taught us, "Verbing weirds language". Weirding is not a bad thing, especially in informal writing/speech. Unless you lack the humo(u)r gene, of course, in which case I feel very, very sorry for you.
Generic "you", not you personally, COCM. Allow me to beer you.
… It is an abomination of nature, the very negation of sound speech!
Don’t be silly. Consider the verb “shepherd”, which came from the noun “shepherd” — the earliest use of the verb came from the pen of Percy Bysshe Shelley, an Englishman, in his poem Arethusa (1820).
"Surely it couldn't be any worse? Could it?"
We've been saying that for years though. In the US they assumed it couldn't be worse than George W. Bush, then they looked like they might elect Palin briefly, and then did elect Trump.
We were complaining for years about May and how hardline she was as Home Secretary, only to appear as a moderate compared to her successors Rudd, Patel and Braverman.
We also always knew May was a lame-duck PM because the Brexiteers knew that the country wasn't ready for one of their own, but spent 3 years plotting with the media to get Boris the top job, and whilst she was useless she was at least (comparitively) honest. Boris lied constantly and was defended by his loyalists (Mad Nad is so on message that she had her tweet queued up to get him back as leader as soon as Truss quit) and then we got Truss, who was a meme who had nothing about her other than saying whatever would get her the biggest cheer from the crowd in front of her.
Indeed and voicing his well known political agenda is now suppressed by parliamentary convention dating back approx 100 years.
The suppression of the Monarchs views obviously goes back further, but the heaviest suppression happens to coincide with the rise of the Tories in place of the Libs and Whigs.
Coincidence? I think not.
By current Republican standards, he certainly wouldn't be allowed to hold any important position in the party.
For one thing, he believed in elections. For another, read his views on the military-industrial complex (aka, Republican welfare). He really thought the money would be better spent on feeding the hungry and clothing the homeless.
Not for Árbenz in Guatemala and Mosaddegh in Iran, he didn’t.
For another, read his views on the military-industrial complex (aka, Republican welfare).
Don’t forget the other warning in his 1961 farewell address:
Akin to, and largely responsible for the sweeping changes in our industrial-military posture, has been the technological revolution during recent decades.In this revolution, research has become central; it also becomes more formalized, complex, and costly. A steadily increasing share is conducted for, by, or at the direction of, the Federal government.
Today, the solitary inventor, tinkering in his shop, has been overshadowed by task forces of scientists in laboratories and testing fields. In the same fashion, the free university, historically the fountainhead of free ideas and scientific discovery, has experienced a revolution in the conduct of research. Partly because of the huge costs involved, a government contract becomes virtually a substitute for intellectual curiosity. For every old blackboard there are now hundreds of new electronic computers.
The prospect of domination of the nation’s scholars by Federal employment, project allocations, and the power of money is ever present—and is gravely to be regarded. Yet, in holding scientific research and discovery in respect, as we should, we must also be alert to the equal and opposite danger that public policy could itself become the captive of a scientific-technological elite.
This is a very serious juncture for the UK.
We have shredded our hard earned reputation for Political & Financial integrity, all because the Conservative Party has a monomaniacal focus on the 'Party' before country.
Their MP's lie, cheat and backstab for the glory of gaining the senior posts and the Pensions to go with them.
The Torys have demonstrated that 'Party' comes before country so many times at any costs to us all that is has stopped being a joke.
Our political system is broken almost to the point of being beyond repair.
The voters are all fed up with the focus being on the 'game' and not on actually running the country.
The country has been on auto-pilot for so long while the political game is being played.
We really do need a GE, just to give the voters a chance to make their views known.
All parties need to be given a wake-up call that Politics is more than a game that you play for a while before you take your job in the city !!!
Real people and their jobs, pensions etc are the ones who are paying the price of these useless talentless hack politicians !!!
God help us all !!!
With the Tories repealing the fixed term parliament act and putting the power to call a GE back with the PM, even though all the opposition parties and probably a good amount of the electorate are wanting an GE there is no much that can be done about it. No incoming new Tory PM in their right mind would call an election now with their rating in the polls being the worst in 40 years.
And I doubt even if Truss thinks her career in the cabinet is done for, she could call one as a last thing she did before leaving in a weeks time?
Meh. Voters get to make their views known from time to time, it doesn't actually seem to clarify very much. Remember the last last few elections, to say nothing of referendums?
No, a GE at this point would get rid of the current bunch, but it wouldn't actually tell us anything about what the voters really want. To get that sort of information, you need an election in which there is more than one major issue being discussed.
This post has been deleted by its author
Since 1960 some countries have managed substantial "growth":
- Link: https://knoema.com/mhrzolg/historical-gdp-by-country-statistics-from-the-world-bank-1960-2019
How about choosing policies adopted by the USA or China?
But no........2% per annum looks like a Tory "high growth" goal!!! Really??
Is suited to el-reg
Ask yourself... why do you read it?
Inform yourself of tech news
Cringe at the who me?
Facepalm at the on-call
Bow down and worship the BOFH*
An on-line compertion between a mouldy lettuce and the prime minister is exactly what this site needs
plus we have 2 new units of time to measure with : 44 days will now be know as a 'truss' and 45 days will be known as a 'lettuce'
*Remember where 2 or 3 are gathered in his name , they shall chant "All hail his bastardness"
>Since Monty Python star John Cleese seems determined to demonstrate exactly how cancelled he is by appearing all over the media,
One of the perks of old age (he's 82) is that you can say what the hell you like and you don't care about being cancelled. (Of course he's politically incorrect and needs to be re-educated.)
From my humble perspective I think the notion is just a reflection on the appalling job we've done with education over the last 40 years or so. Back then the emphasis was on making "education more relevant to business" but what it really came down to was more rote learning, more emphasis on correctness and conformity and a lack of breadth --- teaching ceased to be education and became more about passing the test. (Adding in student fees and stuff just helped the process along.)
The result is a rather humorless bunch who can't "think outside the box" and are generally incapable of putting ideas and concepts into context. They're not too hot on history. I'd say that Margaret Thatcher and Keith Joseph (among others) did a great job. (For those who know Ms Thatcher only as PM, then as education secretary what she was famous for was removing free milk for schoolchildren.....)
Truss, BTW, is and was and always will be a nonentity. Her biggest mistake is not realizing who really runs the country.
"Because the global COVID pandemic, Russian invasion of Ukraine and consequent global energy crisis has nothing to do with this at all, obviously."
No, not really - how did any of that affect the insanity of the Truss minibudget? And you're ignoring the effect of brexit on the UK economy (worse than covid at its peak and far far longer)
Still, I expect you believe in trickle down and the tooth fairy too.
The only link to COVID is that it showed that Boris thought the rules (that he passed!) didn't apply to him. Apart from that, the infighting and dysfunction is nothing to do with anything you quoted. The various factions in the party simply hate each other. The referendum was supposed to fix all this and obviously failed.
As for the disaster of picking Truss as PM. There can only be two possible explanations. The party members either:
* Truly believed that her mental "cut tax and borrow a fuck ton of money to pay for it" policy would actually work
* Didn't want to pick "the brown one"
So financially illiterate or racist. Which is it?
This post has been deleted by its author
Looks like Blair is the last PM who has benefited from the special PM's pension.
Truss’s pension will not receive any extra boost from her time in Downing Street. Since 2013, prime ministers have been part of the regular ministerial pension scheme, paying in a certain proportion of their salary while the government contributes too.
Blair is understood to have been the last prime minister to avail of a special prime minister’s pension. Brown and Cameron decided to forgo the scheme and choose to join the general one, before doing so became law in 2013.
What a complete fiasco. During covid I had a feeling that the Conservatives would be done afterwards, as any party or leader linked with a major societally negative event gets ousted eventually - people just want to remove unpleasant reminders. The only thng keeping them in longer was a silent majority feeling that the other parties weren't viable/a choice. However, Conservatives own infighting has defeated them. Perhaps I shouldn't be too surprised what with all of the contentions in 2014 *still* rumbling on.
"Since Monty Python star John Cleese seems determined to demonstrate exactly how cancelled he is by appearing all over the media"
Personally, I admire the fact that he is standing up for his beliefs in the face of a bunch of censorious people who think that only their opinions should be heard.
""Since Monty Python star John Cleese seems determined to demonstrate exactly how cancelled he is by appearing all over the media"
Personally, I admire the fact that he is standing up for his beliefs in the face of a bunch of censorious people who think that only their opinions should be heard."
Except he isnt - he is sitting in multiple studios whining how the company/corporation that runs those studios is cancelling him. He's all over the media ike a rash. And frankly all he is saying (whe not whining about how unfair it all is) is that there are too many foreign types in Britain now. No wonder he's scampered off to Gbeebies.
It may not be an IT legacy exactly, but as was pointed out on Radio 4's Today programme this morning, the online vote of Tory members lacks strong third-party scrutiny. You can be 16 years old, in fact you could be a member of the party with no voting rights in a general election, and still be able to cast a vote. While I would defend such people's right to be a member of a private organisation in the general case, the lack of independent scrutiny for the leadership vote is a concern. If the member's vote should be close (let's say, 52/48?) such concerns would undermine the legitimacy of the result.
There's a technicality in that the PM is technically chosen by the crown, but I don't see the King intervening, or for that matter intervening in any way that would be constructive.
In an additional irony overload, I don't think any of these Tory chaps have to show a photo ID card to vote.
... is that it looked stable, but eventually it decays into a Putin emitting a Schroeder. And both of them are far more radioactive and have a far longer half life.
But let's see what a "Truss" decays into - very unstable, it should have been the "Kwarteng" field - even if was the outcome of a "Johnson" meltdown already.
He was reported to have measured her time in Scaramuccis. Given his tenure, Truss' time in office worked out to be 4.1 Scaramuccis.
He also observed that she at least outlasted the milk in teh refrigerator, something he didn't manage.
Say what you want, at least he has a sense of humo(u)r. No wonder he didn't last long.
The Register 
Biting the hand that feeds IT
Copyright. All rights reserved © 1998–2024
