Can Labour ignore Johnson’s awful 2006 focus groups?
August 11th, 2008
How can they select someone who could make matters worse?
The only point for Labour to go through the pain of changing the leader again is to improve the party’s chances at the next election. In June 2007, as I keep on reminding people, Labour MPs ignored the overwhelming polling evidence, that has since been proved correct, that Gordon would be an electoral disaster.
So how are we to assess the reports that a union-backed joint Johnson-Cruddas ticket is being proposed. Would PM Johnson be able to turn things round?
What evidence there is does not help. For any hopes, surely, that Johnson might have harboured about becoming leader were totally crushed during Labour’s 2006 September conference when the results of two ego-bruising leadership focus groups were published.
During the months beforehand, it will be recalled, Johnson was being talked up as a possible leadership challenger to Brown - but that all came to an abrupt end when the results of an ICM online study and a Frank Luntz session for Newsnight became known. These were reinforced by a lacklustre conference speech. Johnson realised it then and my guess still does.
This is how Julian Glover in the Guardian summed up the ICM panel’s findings..“Johnson, who is considering running, came across as friendlier but less clear-cut. “He seems like a smiley, cheery fellow to me but not a heavyweight politician,” said one member. Mr Johnson’s lack of a strong identity might change if he became a prominent challenger to Mr Brown. But he suffers for the moment as someone seen as “a bit 1970s“, “someone in the background with not much to say.” One Labour voter thought he looked like “a market trader“. Asked what kind of character he might play in a TV drama, one panelist said “one of those bumbling old jokey types from Coronation Street“.
On Newsnight that evening the Frank Luntz focus group was screened and this was equally damning for the ex-postman.
Luntz wrote in the Times “..Alan Johnson has the perfect biography. Participants felt he had the right life-experience. And when he cracked a joke at David Cameron’s expense (“I was coming on these (TV) programmes without a tie when David Cameron was having a fag behind the bike shed at Eton”) he hit the right note. But for almost everyone, his presentation is, in a word, boring. They didn’t disagree with a word he said. His stated objective that “never again in this country will people have to chose between heating and eating” was certainly pleasing to the ear. But most participants felt his résumé spoke better than . . . well . . . his speaking.”
Johnson went on to become a powerful advocate for Brown particularly during the period in Spring 2007 when all the speculation was over whether there would be a challenge. Then Johnson had a further humiliation when he was pipped at the post by Harriet Harman in the Deputy election.
Alan Johnson is a proud man and I do not believe he has it in him to risk rejection again. Live Labour Leadership prices.
Why is it that parties only get round to choosing election winning-leaders until they have been out of office for a long time and all seems hopeless? It took Labour a long time in the years up to 1994 and the Tories went through a lot of pain for nearly a decade before picking someone who looks like a winner.
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Interesting.
I guess that before parties ‘broken’ by power, get around to focusing on appealing to voters, they need to rebuild their core identities, and redefine who ‘they’ are.
Labour have been living a lie a long time. They defined themselves in relation to someone else (we are not Tories) and have got by since then by avoiding the principle question of what the Labour Party is really all about.
Labour are not worried about losing an election to Cameron. But they are worried about being wiped from the face of the earth. Cruddas and Johnson might rebuild Labour’s core constituency, in the same way that IDS/Howard regrouped Conservatives and opened the way for Cameron.
Miliband might look younger and snappier but is a continuation of the Labour lie, New Labour, which is split from tip to tip between Blairites and Brownites. He is New Labour Mark 3, and would not heal the divisions within Labour’s ranks.
Johnson and Cruddas would pave the way for a regrouping of the Party, make the break with New Labour, which a later leader could build on (if J & C cannot).
Winning power in 2010 is the last thing on Labour minds right now. Holding on to some core territory and an identity are, however.
Tony Blair would have wanted to resign as PM in 2003 or 2004 if he had had a chance (i.e. a suitable window of opportunity without being deflected by Iraq). It was inevitable that he would go before 2010 so they can’t really be blamed for ending up with someone worse than him.
…..Why is it that parties only get round to choosing election winning-leaders until they have been out of office for a long time and all seems hopeless?….
When times are dire, eg Tory 1997, everyone thinks why not me, whilst better candidates think, perhaps next time.
I also think that picking an election winner is extremely difficult. How many of you would have rated Cameron as high as he turned out to be? I certainly didn’t.
Likeable rogue. Reminds me of W C Fields.
Johnson? Acheievements?
Miliband? Achievements?
Cameron ? Achievements?
You could argue that Johnson and Miliband in power have had a chance to achieve and done little (nothing?) with it.
Cameron - having won power - has used the chance to reshape the Conservatives.
Difference is ability and willingness to act.
I think a Johnson/Cruddas leadership would be excellent for the Conservatives for a generation. Neither has shown any ability and their policies - being left wing - would not resonate with the electorate.
None of that will influence the Labour Party.
…..Why is it that parties only get round to choosing election winning-leaders until they have been out of office for a long time and all seems hopeless?…
This doesn’t seem to apply to the Lib Dems tho
Anyone who can run the NHS successfully in the middle of an economic downturn, having inherited a difficult situation from his predecessors, isn’t a lightweight politician.
re 7. Johnson inherited an NHS that is being funded on a scale that we have never seen before. His task is so much easier compared with predecessors who simply did not have the resources available.
In any case the point is how he is perceived and, more importantly, whether he is electable.
All I am saying is that the evidence we have does not look good for him.
7 - Ermintrude
I work for the NHS, and I’m not sure I agree with you.
By what criteria do you think it’s being run sucessfully?
7 A man who, all heart, decides that someone dying of cancer whose doctor prescribes a drug or treatment not sanctioned by NICE, at their own expense (often funded by mortgage or family & friends) should therefore have all NHS treatment refused? That’s running the NHS successfully?
Johnson doesn’t “run” the NHS, he sets out strategy and policy. From what I’ve seen he’s not great at either, not disastrous but he hasn’t added much.
8. Yes the point about the focus groups is well taken and the last conf speech was not brilliant. I think a bit of nervous tension/passion is necessary to project an important speech (his super-relaxed style is a bit reminiscent of David Davis in this respect).
But he is actually handling an NHS budget that is barely growing in real terms compared to the vast increases that his Labour predecessors were able to deploy. His handling of difficult situations like the new arrangements for GPs surgeries had been good. The NHS is polling better for Labour now that he is in charge.
I think all the talk of leadership changes is rather exaggerated but in any event Johnson will continue to have a key role.
7 Ermintrude.Left of centre contributors still, in spite of all the evidence (Health service, education, crime, immigration etc.) - equate spending money with success. The problem Cameron will have is that, after 11 years, the civil service which is involved in the detail now think the same way.The very difficult task of a new government will have to be to change this way of thinking.The attitude must be the same as in any succesful business - first identify the problem and the possible solution - then decide what money has to be spent. What civil servants, with no understanding of - or even any interest in- this obvious approach to problems are capable of learning? A daunting task that could well lead to resistance and failure.
Alan Johnson is the John Major candidate. A perfect lifestory and respectably competent at his job as a minister (but without obvious headline successes). Like John Major, Alan Johnson is a pretty mediocre speaker. I also suspect that Alan Johnson, like John Major, would be managerial as a Prime Minister rather than a leader.
Of course, John Major won an election against the odds when his predecessor had left the Tories way behind in the polls. Might Alan Johnson do the same? I don’t think so, mainly because David Cameron is a lot more formidable than Neil Kinnock. However, Alan Johnson would be a choice that offered more hope than David Miliband would offer.
The choosing of a new leader is a chaotic process, there’s nothing planned about it. Tapestry’s contention that IDS/Howard were some sort of process that lead automatically to Cameron is simply nonsense. Part of the English, ‘Sword in the Stone’ mentallity.
Blair was the result of an ‘accident’ the death of John Smith. Cameron, was a homage to Blair, if we can’t beat ‘em we’ll have to join ‘em.
Choosing a new leader is a pig-in-a-poke choice, you won’t know what you’ve got, till you’ve got it.
14 You can’t predict a right un but you can predict wrong uns. Did anyone apart from the mentally impaired think IDS a winner even in 2001. Mr Smithson also called Brown right.
15
Events make you, events will break you!
GB became the prisoner of events he could not control, the only chance he had of breaking free of them, was by calling a GE last autumn, his failure to do so, doomed him.
Compare it, to the problem of, ‘Spin’ experienced by WW1 pilots. Trying to steer out of the spin made it worse, only by riding the spin can you neutralize the centrifugal forces pulling you to earh.
7
Either their predecessors were also Labour, or there has been an economic downturn that lasted 11 years?…
Engage brains perhaps before typing, or is it too much to ask?
re 8. I have not posted her for months but Ermintrude’s comments really irritate me. I live on a pension which has been partly curtailed by a firm I used to work for going bust and taking almost all of my pension savings with it. I then tired to invest with Equitable Life and we all know what happened there.
I also had some savings in Railtrack shares which were confiscated by the Labour government.
Labour’s answer to everything is simply to tax and then spend - without any real control over whether that spending is effective. The fact that Brown and others only ever boast of things in terms of the money spent rather than what is achieved is symptomatic of the problem.
Labour, which barring 2005, has had my vote at every election since 1966 will not get it next time - or ever again.
I doubt whether the Tories will be much better but they can hardly be any worse. And as for Nick Clegg - what a pratt?
In the meantime I get poorer by the month.
Re. the nervous tension necessary for speeches, Enoch Powell always made sure he made every speech on a full bladder.
16, became the prisoner? He built the jail himself.
He need not have announced there would be no election. Cameron’s famous “first PM in history to flunk an election because he thought he was going to win it” wouldn’t've happened then.
In addition, it wouldn’t have irked every journalist (with one jug-eared exception) in the country.
He has been unlucky, but he hasn’t helped himself. Instead of governance he’s concerned himself with political manoeuvring.
12&18. Surely I made my point clearly enough? To repeat, Johnson has **less** money to spend than his predecessors but he is still doing a good job.
10. Correction accepted, it’s a strategic role.
9. What job do you do? V. briefly I would say that he is steering the NHS to being a more primary-care led service with more emphasis on public health and health inequalities.
Now that NHS spending as a proportion of GDP is closer to the EU average the era of very large increases is over. Nevertheless NHS spending increases will continue to be higher than general inflation because people are living longer and new medical technology is expensive. The conservatives, in hinting at tax cuts across the board, rarely acknowledge this fact. Do we go back to nurses raising the money at flag days?
16 Yes of course why I said you can’t predict right uns. But can you really with a straight face claim that IDS could ever have been a winner. Think you’re have having a laugh if you say that.
Is this not the same Alan Johnson who when confronted with the need for the reform of Public Service pensions - bottled it. If he maintained this form, then it is very likely that he would buckle under sustained Trade Union pressure when confronted with unaffordable pay or service demands.
20
We are probably saying the same thing.
Brown’s failure to call a GE, that is he thought he could, ’steer himself out of the forces that were pulling him along’ caused the fabric to be torn of his wings.
If he had won, (I thought he would probably end up with a maj of about 30) with a working majority, then the Tories would have been facing five more long weary years in opposition. A 10K would have suddenly become a marathon, anything can happen in a marathon.
Yes, but on the other hand, I am convinced that Hague would now be an election winner if picked to lead the Conservatives now. Nowadays, he is very positively viewed and his negatives have faded away. Partly, it may be that he was too young last time but, in my view, the real factor is simply that the Tories were down in the dumps then and nobody could have done anything about it (including Cameron). It is much easier to lead the main opposition party when the government is very unpopular.
(Obviously IDS was never going to cut it but that was clearly a bout of utter insanity by Tory MPs determined to stop Portillo).
26. We won’t ever have a bald Prime Minister again so Hague wouldn’t be an election winner now or at any stage in the future.
Can they? Yes. Will they? Probably. Will that somebody be Johnson? Probably not.
Labour will elect Hattie. And, of course, she will make things much worse.
re 24. I don’t think that Labour would have won on November 1st and that Brown, for all the flack he has taken, got the decision right.
Remember the Tories had been almost blanked out of the news for three months prior to their conference starting and the media was treating Brown as though he was a new messiah. That suddenly all went wrong and the media had a wake-up call with Brown’s visit to Iraq on the day of Cameron’s speech.
That NOTW ICM marginals poll was very telling.
My guess is that Labour would have had a bad election campaign and would have struggled to keep the Tory majority within 30 seats.
Now I just don’t know. Will Miliband make a difference? Until we see some proper polling it is hard to draw a conclusion.
25
If IDS had become leader of the Tory Party at this stage of the Economic/Political cycel whose say what his position would have been?
Political parties are very conceited organisations, puffed up with their own self importance, they are very poorly designed.
I believe the 21st century will eventually produce parties that are much more responsive to change, starting with the position of the party leader.
The quasi-monarchial role of the leader, must be ended. Party leaders are elected (?) for an indefinite period, that should end, eight years maximum, reviewed and re-elected at each party conference.
The reason why political parties explode and destroy themselves every few years, is because they are like pressure vessels that have been built without safety valves.
26. Cameron’s starting to thin.
“Why is it that parties only get round to choosing election winning-leaders until they have been out of office for a long time and all seems hopeless?”
Well, except the Lady.
Who on earth looks at Alan Johnson and considers him to be a future leader of this country? He has been very average as Education then Health Secretary and is not a particularly impressive performer in front of the media. I do not see how he could either unite Labour or introduce any momentum - save for the bounce from getting rid of Gordon.
http://lettersfromatory.wordpress.com
6. I think that the Lib Dems are so used to losing they don’t even notice any more.
Alan Johnston will never recover from what he said on Desert Island discs He knew the job was too much for him
He has never gone out there, and made any waves, to show, he could make a difference, he has no financial experience whats so ever.
Pity help us if he gets anywhere near us
Johnson is hardly inspiring but he is certainly better than geek-boy Milliband.
Let’s not forget that there has already been polling on alternative leaders - MIlliband did worse than Brown, as did every other option.
21 - I am a pharmacist working in secondary care, and the centralised drive towards a primary care led service is bringing in a raft of unforseen consequences that are not good at all for the NHS in my isolated part of the country. The problems and arguments are far too long to elaborate on here, but basically the DOH is driving all these ideas you have described through without any clear evidence base, and it will surely end in yet another hurried and ill-thought out reorgansation before this government is through with the NHS.
35, that’s why Brown should be stuck with by Labour.
He’s rubbish. But so are almost all potential replacements and some (Balls) would be a catastrophe.
25 Your last sentence IMHO provides a reason why it often takes a party so long to find the right leader - they choose someone not for his abilities but to to stop someone else. Hague wasn’t an obvious candidate but was seen as preferable to Howard as the candidate to stop Clarke, IDS initially to stop Portillo then the membership preferred him to Clarke. With Howard it was TINA, the party had no clear direction but recognised the need to consolidate. It wasn’t until the factionalism had declined sufficiently that the Party (MPs and members) actually were ready for a leadership election based on quality of candidates rather than stopping another faction.
Labour is now factionalised, talk of Johnson/Cruddas to stop Miliband, then Clarke, Milburn and Byers stirring things to promote a Blairite candidature (while being unsure Miliband is a Blairite) against the Brownites and the remaining Brownites hoping to hold on till something turns up.
29 Certainly not 20 points in front.
29 - “If IDS had become leader of the Tory Party at this stage of the Economic/Political cycel whose say what his position would have been?”
This would have been an absolute gift to the LDs. Alas it was not to be!
Nu Labours best chance is to get Blair back.
One for seanT
EU bureaucrats ‘outnumber British army two to one
39
We don’t know that! IDS certainly wasn’t what we think a party leader or PM should look and sound like, but then neither was Australia’s John Howard.
If event’s had played into IDS’s hands like they have into Cameron’s, who knows?
43 - John Howard was bright and a very sharp political operator. IDS?
28
I am sure David Cameron is delighted no election was called : and also he did not win.
Government in this environment is a no win situation.
@42:
As of April 2007, the British Army includes roughly 100,310 regular personnel and 26,460 Territorial Army members. In addition, the MOD and joint chiefs of staff employ around 200,000 non-commissioned civil service support staff.
Thus, the British Army employs around 330,000 people.
46 - that makes a lot of paper pushers for the British Army.
Ted, these machinations to stop others rather than to positively choose someone are done by the MPs or party professionals. Even in 2001 the MPS gave the Tory membership the Hobson’s choice of IDS or Ken Clarke. Give the membership as wide a choice as possible. Leadership elections are revealing. This was certainly the case with the Tories in 2005, where many of us saw qualities in Cameron which set him apart, even if the early favourite among the MPs was probably Davis. Also, the closeness of the Clegg v. Huhne contest was a harbinger of the reservations about Clegg, who started as the runaway, establishment favourite, remember.
The message for labour: have a contested election or stick with Brown.
42. The British Army only has to protect 60 million people. The EU has to run a continent of 350 million people. 170,000 doesn’t seem to bad to me!
I suspect that figure is an exaggeration anyway.
43
I think that boat load of Afghan’s helped.
The boat load of Afghan’s turning up at a critical moment, is a situation beloved of chaos theorists. Everything pointed to a Labor victory, (doesn’t that spelling of Labor annoy) then it was, ‘Events, dear boy events!.
OT
Is Brown’s much-abused poodle, Alistair Darling, really ready to slip his leash and turn on his cruel master at last?:
“Treasury fury at No 10 as estate agents demand talks on stamp duty”
http://www.timesonline.co.uk/tol/money/property_and_mortgages/article4500066.ece
Obviously IDS was never going to cut it but that was clearly a bout of utter insanity by Tory MPs determined to stop Portillo
Based on the subsequent behaviour of Michael Portillo (of whom I used to be a fan) I would say that the party made the right choice. Portillo has been nothing but a pain for the Conservative party ever since he was passed over.
A party can be led from the right or the left, but the leader has to keep the wings together. Portillo wanted Cameroon to kill off the right of the party, which would have destroyed his chances of success.
The EU has to run a continent of 350 million people.
No it doesn’t “have to”, the continent can run itself thanks.
There is also the point that it is tricky to change leader successfully when you’re in government, especially when you’re unpopular, behind in the polls, and all the main names are tainted with that unpopularity. In addition, there is the time factor; the selection process which led to Cameron being selected as Conservative leader went on for many months, allowing the relatively unknown Cameron to become better known and for the party members to see and hear him in action as a potential party leader on TV and radio. If the selection process had been shorter, my guess is that the temptation would have been to go for the better-known and apparently safer choice of David Davis, who would not, in my view, have been the right person to extend the Conservative’s popularity beyond the core vote.
There may well be some relatively unknown potential candidate, outside the list of names which repeatedly get mentioned today, whom Labour could select in 2010 after an election defeat, and who would revitalise the party ready for 2014. This is, after all, a whole six years away. To put this in perspective, David Cameron has, even now, been an MP for only seven years.
At the moment, it looks as though Labour are going for the very worst option (from their point of view) - many months of dithering and in-fighting, which may or may not culminate in a messy palace coup and bitter selection battle, which in turn would end up with them selecting a candidate of no great electoral appeal. None of the current favourites - Miliband, Harman, Johnson, Straw - look to me like election winners on a scale capable of transforming their prospects.
37. He’s rubbish. But so are almost all potential replacements
Yes - and this is the basic problem for Labour now - an acute lack of talent. The Tories had the same problem in the 1990s and 2000s. I can remember surveying the candidates for the leadership in 2001 and thinking none of them were remotely suitable. They were all has-beens, geeks or nobodies.
@55:
What’s everybody got against geeks?
I’m feeling victimised here.
It really is incredible that a Government with a majority of 60+ has descended into internecine civil war. John Major held it together with no majority. It just goes to show what a masterful politician he was.
Alan Johnson is a Trade Union man who has become a politician. IF he became PM and Labour leader, the CBI would through a total wobbly, all business backing for Labour would evaporate, except of course for those who have become incredibly rich through Labour patronage and the Unions would become more militant sensing a return to “beer and sandwiches” at No 10.
Why can’t they realise the time for them to go has come. Incidentally Day 4 of the Caucauses crisis and no sign of Millibland or Brown (Pa not Des with an “e”). What sort of leadership is that? Cheney warning this morning that the Russians have gone too far fills me with dread.
Sorry I meant throw not through of course
The Brussels pen pushers set the rules, the national governments and their civil service have to implement them.
So the pen pushers ‘running Europe of 350 million’ is numbered in millions too.
Punters may want to sign up to this
http://my.barackobama.com/vicepresident
It will send you an email and/or text message as soon as Obama’s VP is announced, and before many of the news outlets will report it. Punters near a computer could make some very fast money laying all unsuccessful candidates.
Let me know if it proves useful.
Morus
Potentially the next labour PM is not even an MP yet.
Possibly one of the new intake in 2010 - taking over a safe seat from a retiring MP..
Ted at 38. Spot on, good analysis. I am fascinated by the reasons why a period in power almost always creates deep factions in political parties. This is notable in local politics and happens far more quickly than in Government but it happens everywhere eventually.
It seems to me that it is the accumilation of collateral damage from the need to make decisions - by definition difficult choices are being made all the time by a Government or Council. Each decision causes tensions, frays tempers, stresses relationships between colleagues that in a business you would just have to live with and accept but in politics seems instead to foster resentment and thoughts of revenge.
Why? I think it comes down to ego. Seeing all those crosses of ballot papers, thinking that they have the ‘personal’ support of thousands of people clearly affects some people deeply; and probably not all that positively.
What is interesting is how quickly the inflated ego of so many elected (and especially re-elected) people clouds the sense of common purpose that was probably the reason they won in the first place.
Am I the only one that thinks a change in leader, even to one better than Brown that rises their poll standing, might make things worse for Labour in the longer term? If Brown stumbles on for another two years and then gets mauled at election, people will ascribe it to Brown being no Blair etc. However, if someone else comes in, and they don’t manage much of a turn around, the perception will spread that it isn’t just Brown, it’s Labour. I know most Tories on here think that already, but most non-politicos I know, especially C2 and D types, think it’s all Brown. If that changes, it really could be longterm meltdown for them.
60 Morus. Why are you e-mailing yourself to tell you that you’re Obama’s Veep ??
[52] - “A party can be led from the right or the left, but the leader has to keep the wings together. Portillo wanted Cameroon to kill off the right of the party, which would have destroyed his chances of success.”
Your statement hardly tallies with Blair’s, or Kinnock’s experience. They both took on the left of their party, and succeeded in killing it off to an extent. Blair - “scars on my back” - never missed an opportunity to display his contempt for the “Left” in a way that Cameron has not come anywhere near to doing.
As to which is the wiser course of action, I’m not sure, but Blair demonstrates it simply isn’t true that a “leader has to keep the wings of his party together.”
63 - Socrates: I don’t know whether to be more shocked that you mix with non-politicos, or that you mix with C2/Ds!
NQOCD.
(Before I get blasted, this is a joke…)
64 - Deep-seated psychological self-doubt, I suppose! Maybe I should consider electrolysis…
Why is it that parties only get round to choosing election winning-leaders until they have been out of office for a long time and all seems hopeless?
I’ll play the devil’s advocate here.
If Cameron existed in 1997 and won the leadership race, the election in 2001 would prove that the Tories had selected a lightweight with no substance, just better presentation than Major. After losing as heavily he would disappear into the backbenches never to play a role in frontline politics again.
After losing in 2005 again the Tories finally get round to choosing a man who will tell it like it is, IDS (or Davis)! People are tired of Blair’s and Brown’s spin and lies and in 2008 after the economy has taken a nose dive realise that a quiet straightforward man who lacks charisma (and is even somewhat scary) is what is needed to deliver economic reform, tackle crime etc… He is being presented as pragmatic, practical, down to earth, with “common sense” solutions to all these issues. The opposite to Blair/Brown. The public laps it up and he gets consistent poll leads of 10-20%.
To put it in a nutshell, the rival theory I propose is that “electability” is decided by which part of the electoral cycle we are in, that is, “being in the right place at the right time”. Become leader of the opposition when the government is despised and you are God.
I have to say that I don’t really believe in this extreme scenario and I think that IDS’s leadership was a total disaster, the Tories should have definitely chosen Portillo or Clarke. I just had to mention the other side of the argument.
I think the truth lies between the 2 extremes.
My scenario - It all depends on the electoral cycle to decide who’s God and who’s a chump. And the other scenario - Finally the opposition party wisens up and chooses a winner (Cameron, Obama) who is welcomed as the Messiah by the media.
@60:
Will the SMS work outside the US of Americaland?
65. I think it depends on the circumstances. When things are going badly it is absolutely imperative for the leader to focus on unity and, as it were, “hunker down”. The impression of disunity very quicly leads to an evaporation of confidence both within and without the party. The Tories, once upon a time, were quite good at this.
When things are going well and the political cycle is with you, particularly in opposition, it is possible to be more daring as Blair proved. Cameron could now quite easily, and with minimal risk, marginalise and antagonise the right without if affecting his numbers (indeed has already done so with respect to Simon Heffer at the Telegraph).
67 Morus. Certainly not. You should purchase several bottles of Jack W’s patent medicinal prize winning organic herbal remedy for political anoraks. A absolute bargain at 50 guineas a case !!
60 Morus - Oh yea, that’s me and another 1000 PBers online at any one time!
Now if you’d just emailed this to me, I’m sure we could have come to a little arrangement.
62. It is ego. Nobody goes into politics, even at a local level, without an elephant sized ego. I think the geographic constituiency system helps as well. I’m Mr/Mrs Everytown, I’m ultimately accountable to them not you etc.
Oh and at a council levels kissingers (apocraphal ? ) maxim ” Student politics is precisely so vicious because so little is at stake.”
@71:
DANGER! DANGER!
JackW’s moonshine addles the eyes and mind so badly you start to find Ruth Kelly attractive.
It’s already ruined one young life. DON’T BE ANOTHER.
74 Martin Coxall. My cunning plan to ensure Our Gawd remains in Downing Street is ruined !!!
BREAKING WIND NEWS **** BREAKING WIND NEWS **** BREAKING WIND NEWS
The breaking news is that WIND is reporting to JNN the contents of a new ARSE (BUTT) poll of polls that indicates :
McCain 45% .. Obama 50.5% .. Others 4.5%
The PISSED Jack W Index with added SOAMES BIG MAC weighting shows :
McCain 157 .. Obama 247 .. Toss Up 134
Changes Since Last Projection - None.
Toss Up - Up to 5% .. Likely - 5%-10% .. Safe - Over 10%
Eliminate Toss Up States - 270 required for an Electoral College majority.
McCain 202 .. Obama 336.
Obama is the 44th President of the United States of America
……………………
Sources :
WIND ….. Whimsical Independent News Division.
JNN ………..Jacobite News Network.
ARSE …… Anonymous Random Selection of Electors.
BUTT …… British Underpinned Tracking Totals
PISSED … Political Intelligence Seat Selector Election Determinator
SOAMES …System Of Amending Measured Election Scores
BIG MAC ..Ballot Indicies Grid Manifesting America’s Choice
73. I’ve never heard that Kissinger quote before, very apt. LOL.
74. many people were pleasently surprised by your photos at the PB BBQ. Not at all what was expected. A rich, fruity, oak aged personna you could take home to mum. It takes all sorts Martin !
73. I know a party professional who sighed to me once ‘why is it whenever you put ‘CLLR’ before someones name you can just as soon but ‘w**ker’ after it?
79 marcus. Walker !! …. excellent news that our local elected representatives are promoting health and fitness.
“Barack is about to choose a running mate”
This sounds like he’s about to stick his hand into a tombola drum! It also sounds quite imminent doesn’t it …..this week?
SMS should work, as long as you put 0044 at the front of your mobile number. I can’t see why not anyway.
PfP - But what if neither of us were online?! I thought if I democratised the announcement, it would guarentee that someone on here would clean up, and hopefully donate to the ‘Morus for VP’ campaign (inc flights) - or at very least to the next PB.com party!
Fastest finger first!!
81 - He’s on vacation this week in Hawaii. Early next week I reckon.
In light of the above I should confess to having been a union hack and a councillor in the past!
@78:
“Rich and fruity”? ME?
I couldn’t possibly comment.
68. Man of the people, Morus, man of the people.
Besides, what makes you think I’m not a C2/D myself!
85 - Four words away from the infamous quote!
86 Called Socrates ?!
88. Ex-military, lived off others’ charity, critic of the social order, gadfly to the ruling class, public nuisance and always going on about how the everyman should have a say. A right little populist I reckon!
@89:
Sounds like a PPE student. Pfffft.
Does anyone know more about this restriction?
“Obama’s campaign sought cell phone numbers via text message during the primary (Lucky for his campaign, the guy’s last name has five letters, the number needed for special text-only lines).”
Re. 28, and I seem to remember the Tories won a local by-election on a hefty swing on the Thursday before Brown made his announcement on the Saturday. Apt that, when it was a good result for Labour in a council by-election in Worcester that helped spark the election speculation in the first place.
Re. 52, and with his lacklustre performance on the Question Time leadership special, Portillo looked like a man undergoing an ideological version of the male menopause. I still wonder, though, whether he might not have beaten Clarke in the membership round, when his social liberalism might have proved slightly less rebarbative than Clarke’s Europhilia.
88 - My thoughts exactly!
You all have a ‘voice’ on here - I can’t help but infer gender, timbre, and accent. You have quite an educated voice, Socrates - forgive my presumption!
91 - The other way you can sign up for text alerts is to text 62262 (OBAMA in txt msg) - that service (number capture by texts received) requires that you choose a 5 digit code, not a full phone number. Happily, ‘Obama’ has five letters, so they had a good choice of number.
94. Ah, ok, I thought it meant something about the VP needing five letters or less!
92 - Andropause is, I believe, the given term nowadays to the ‘male menopause’
when his social liberalism might have proved slightly less rebarbative than Clarke’s Europhilia.
Portillo screwed up big time. He was a Thatcherite and loved by the right of the party. He then had his Damascene conversion and came back as a social liberal. A clever man would have used this opportunity to widen his appeal. Instead he turned on his previous allies and called them all the names he could think of. H
is new friends among the “modernisers” fairly rationally, were not sure if they could trust him. So he went from being the darling of the right, to being the dodgy man of the centre.
Ever since he has shown the tact and grace in defeat that came to define Edward Heath.
As for Clarke, a mildy Europhilic contender could have won, but he ended up defining himself by the one issue that most Tory’s hate. Another idiot. They both have only themselves to blame for their failures.
95 - Haha! And that still wouldn’t help us choose between Kaine, Bayh, Biden, Dodd, Reed, Gore…
92 - Good to see ‘rebarbative’ getting a run-out on the site. Great word.
99 - ‘less rebarbative’ is not how one would usually characterise Portillo, though…
87 - in the head to head debate between IDS and Clarke,Clarke came across especially poorly - a pompous git.
96, hmm. Shouldn’t then the female version be misopause?
Bioquiz: what is the only animal other than human to experience menopause?
@102:
No, that’s the lull between courses at a Japanese restaurant.
@102:
“Menopause in the animal kingdom appears perhaps to be somewhat uncommon, although the incidence in different species has by no means been thoroughly researched. However, it is already quite apparent that humans are not the only species that experience it. Menopause has been observed in rhesus monkeys[1], some cetaceans[2], as well as in a variety of other species of vertebrates including the guppy, the platyfish, the budgerigar, the laboratory rat and mouse, the opossum, and all manner of primates[3].”
Thikipedia.
104, that’s fascinating. At university (about 3 years ago now) I learnt that only the mingke whale underwent menopause. Hmm. Maybe I’m confusing it with periods. Or maybe education in this country has gone downhill. Or thikipedia could be wrong.
SO many options!
101 Clarke is pompous, in its meaning of self importance rather than exaggerated dignity, which has been his downfall. His dismissal of criticism, generally as headbanging or similar, gives no worth to opponents which builds resentment. IMHO IDS was the least worst choice in 2001 as the party would have fractured between sceptic membership and Europhile leadership or between ultra-modernisers and traditionalists.
106 I definitely agree there (DOI I voted for IDS) The final choice for the membership was between more of the same, that might turn out ok (but didn’t) and utter disaster, for both party and country.
I am a great admirer of Ken Clarke, as Chancellor, as an affable, intelligent and engaging Tory, a great man all around really; a party leader (not the party leader). Unfortunately, his position on Europe is fundamentally irreconcilable with modern Conservativsm. Supporters of the EU project often seem to me simply not to understand what national sovereignty means to 90% plus of Conservatives. It is the sine qua non of politics for us. Politics is about helping the people of your country, and advancing her goals. So if you attack the idea of country itself, what is the point?
Sovereignty doesn’t get close to being the biggest thing or the most important thing day to day, but it is a totally necessary (though not sufficient) condition of every other piece of political action for us.
Therefore, for all Ken Clarke’s many and considerable virtues he would have been utterly the wrong choice to lead the Tory party, ever. Any candidate at all, so long as they supported national sovereignty, would have been preferable.
If Johson is running it is a clever move to have Cruddas as your running mate, despite the fact he was a former No.10 apparatchik he is well supported by the left and hard left in the party.
I suspect he may be more of an outrider than serious candidate, possibly helping to take some heat from Miliband and keep the story running. It will also help to strengthen his own position.
106 - Ted, you’ve said many very sensible things in your posts, but in the higher interest we really do need to try to ensure that the phrase ‘least worst’ is squashed before if finally takes permanent hold in our lovely language. It may be too late, of course, but PB.com is one of the last bastions. Perhaps if we hold out here, there is still hope…
On the point, maybe IDS was the better choice, given that Clarke would have split the party. The mistake was getting to the point where that was the choice. Not the party’s finest hour, I think.
@110:
That was Hague’s doing. In his undignified rush to resign, he really threw the party to the wolves at a bad time. Hague should have stayed on as leader in 2001.
102 - No, miso means hate…..
112, oh yeah. I was thinking of misogyny and took the wrong bit.
OT: South Ossetia (and Abkhazia) seem no nearer peace. I wonder if this will become seen as the first gambit of a new, energy-fuelled Cold War.
Sorry to go O/T- This may be of interest to some.
http://georgiamfa.blogspot.com/
Denis Macshane puts the boot into the Tories about somehing I said would come back to haunt them: support for Russia in the Council of Europe: http://www.telegraph.co.uk/opinion/main.jhtml?xml=/opinion/2008/08/11/do1104.xml
re 108 - Test - if it is so important to “90% plus of Conservatives then why does this not figure in the polls?
Unprompted only 1% of electors say the EU etc is the most important issue facing Britain today and only 3% include it when asked to list all the other issues that concern them at the moment.
Brown had it right when he used to dismiss Cameron’s concerns on this matter as “the old agenda”.
Nobody gives a monkeys and for you, and others to keep going on about it simply detracts from the message of change that your leader is successfully promoting.
We are in, the details might not be to our satisfaction but overall the benefit is positive - why not find something else to get worked up about?
The continuing obsession is pathetic.
108. Indeed. Ken Clarke would have been leader (probably thrice over) if he hadn’t been such a rabid europhile.
On such little things do the wheels of history turn…
111 - Yes, I hadn’t thought of it like that, but you are right, Martin. Ensuring that things are set up in such a way that the party can have a good stab at choosing your successor is one of the prime duties of a party leader. Blair perhaps realised this, at least in the latter stages of his premiership, but was powerless to do anything about it.
The impression I have (reinforced by what Hague has said recently in various interviews) is that he never really had the appetite for power which is necessary in a leader. Something Labour should bear in mind, especially in respect of Johnson.
115, pathetic is when you promise in your manifesto to hold a referendum and then don’t vote for one.
115. There is a difference between the electorate and the party activist base.
I’m sorry Mike, but issues can be important for reasons other than appeal to the electorate at poll time. Nobody really cares about electoral reform either, but it would clearly have a huge effect on the way this country is governed.
115 We are in, the overall benefit doesn’t exist, but the fact that the majority of our laws are made there makes it quite important… Apart from anything else, the electorate in the Conservative Party leadership elections is not the same as the electorate generally
@115:
Mr Smithson, you keep doing this, and unfortunately it reveals your inner Lib Dem and paints you in a very bad light.
You’re a smart guy, and surely you can understand that whilst it’s not an election winning/losing issue because of its lack of headline importance, attitudes toward the EU are a very important marker of what kind of person you are politically, and will taint the way you are viewed by politically-minded persons.
I very much doubt that any Tory will ever trust a Europhile again.
With regard to Ken Clarke, he would have made the issue much more important in everyone’s minds, because he would hardly have acted as a brake on Blair signing us up for the Euro, and anything else the EU wanted. UKIP might have done rather better, as there would have been no alternative.
115 Mike you’re not quite getting what I’m saying, I don’t think.
The EU is not the main political issue for voters or even one of the main political issues. Day to day it isn’t for most Tory activists, either. We’re out there leafleting on ‘Grand Theft Auto’ and the cost of living, NHS etc. Those things are our political priorities, all of us. making Britain safer and greener and fixing the broken society (incidentally IDS’s social justice work is fundamental to this effort).
However, and this is the distinction, as activists we understand that the PM’s ability to shape policy to answer all these concerns - tax, interest rates, currency, immigration, healthcare - depends upon the Commons being able to legislate. Where the decision is taken out of the hands of the Commons by the EU we can’t help the voters with the bread and butter issues that matter to them.
Therefore, exactly because we do want action on the economy, social justice etc, we are determined to make sure the UK retains the power to act.
I believe in the EU and there are places where sovereignty can be usefully pooled but they are limited. Most Tories want a streamlined, forward thinking EU much different from today’s beauracratic, voter-avoiding behemoth. The Tory party contains both federalists and Better Off Out-ers, but both are a small minority. Pragmatists, who want a faster, simpler, better EU (in practise this means repatriating some powers and halting further integration, and directing the EU to where it can be useful) are the vast majority in our party. Clearly, judging by his statements on the matter to date the pragmatist camp includes David Cameron. He wants to have the tools he needs to take action on the issues voters want fixed.
115. “The continuing obsession is pathetic.”
So, if it’s such a “non-issue”, why do you feel the need to always point this “fact” out to us then?
The arguments have been made to you, Mike, time, time and time again…
(1) People don’t understand the EU or the influence it has over us
(2) The more they do know, the higher the salience of the issue rises in the polls
(3) Look at the much higher figures when adoption of the euro seemed a very real possibility from 1995-2000
(4) The Lisbon Treaty has successfully confused everybody to the extent where noone understands, so noone worries about it
(5) That said, people are gravely concerned about Crime/Immigration; all areas in which are constrained (to some degree of other) by EU policy
(6) Ask people what they think, they want powers repatriated and less law-making by Brussels
(7) Without this, we don’t have much flexibility to solve British problems, do we?
(8) I imagine people give little cr*p (or understand) power stations and the national grid in the UK - doesn’t stop us being in deep doo-doo if we don’t build some new ones to replace the old nuclear ones in the next decade.
It’s that simple.
On a more personal level, Mike, if you’re over 60, you’ll well-up for the EU because of WWII. You sweep any inconvenient “facts” under the table. End of.
If you’re under 45, you recognise it’s undemocratic and overbearing and want a looser union. End of.
Face facts Mike. The next Conservative government will reform the EU.
Nothing to be afraid of.
@124:
“The next Conservative government will reform the EU.”
Hah! Good luck with that.
Let me say that I thought it was a terrible mistake for the Lib Dems not to have gone for tbe referendum. The party approach was totally dumb and showed an absence of political judgement that is becoming all too common.
Buj the way some Tories go n about this is even worse. You allowed your party to be nearly destroyed over something that simply does not register
[121] Certainly any one who is even mildly favourable to the EU is unlikely to trust a Tory….
Nevertheless, Mike is right, and figures close to Cameron have been privately reassuring to me about continuing British memebership of and general support for, European institutions under any future Conservative administration. This Europhobic ranting will therefore not be Conservative policy, and on that clear understanding, I suggest that hitherto Tory Europhobes recognise the inevitable and join Chris at Devils Kitchen in the UKIP corner- it is the only corner that you have in British politics- and the only honourable position for those who truly believe that we are “better off out”.
126. What percentage of the Scottish electorate have independence as their most important issue? Perhaps the SNP should just stop going on about it, or should even be willing to elect a unionist leader?
124 “The next Conservative government will reform the EU.”
It might like to. It might even try to. I wouldn’t bet one penny on it actually doing so.
126. So you ultimately don’t believe that parties should have any principle above what helps win elections?
125. Yup
Tactical JSF strike on Brussels with a couple of Cruise missiles fired at Strasbourg for good measure.
Maybe the rubble could be “reformed” into a rude statue of Jacques Delore or something?
126 - I think it registers, I don’t think it changes votes in any meaningful way. There is a difference. Insinctively I am pretty sceptical of the EU and the ever expanding reach it has. Most of it is pretty unnecessary. Is co-operation with our partners unnecessary, clearly not, but does it have to be on an excessively organised basis? I have doubts.
126 We allowed our party to be nearly destroyed on the issue - but have come out on the right sode. More you can say for the Lib Dems.
127 I’m sure Cameron won’t stand on the steps of No 10 and say “we’re leaving now” but equally he won’t be signing powers away and lying about referenda (at least not if he wants to remain COnservative leader for any length of time.
127 Cicero of course we will continue to be members of the EU, that is stated party policy. You can’t sit on Cameron’s front bench if you’re Better Off Out.
If you think we’ll be signing up to Lisbon or a Lisbon-a-like or doing other than moving to reform, I fear you will be very disappointed.
@126:
I do agree with you there. Allowing the parliamentary party to foment open civil war over Maastricht was outright stupidity, and opened wounds that has taken fifteen years to heal.
Of course, the anger and venom that drove the venom debate was initially fomented by the manner of Thatcher’s defenestration. Maastricht merely became a convenient battleground on which the civil war could be fought.
But we’re here now, we came through, we survived, the Eurobotherers lost, and no Tory who remembers what it was like will ever trust a Europhile again.
130 - You should ensure your priorities are the people’s priorities. That doesn’t mean you should follow what any focus group says. But political parties are meant to be instruments to convert public aims into action. They are not pressure groups or philosophical talking shops.
129 HenryH interesting, - I think it is inevitable. The desire for Lisbon will force the EU to move to a different structure, with an integrationist group and an allied, but more liberal, group of members keeping their sovereignty.
If I were inclined to gamble I’d bet on it happening in the next five years.
re 130. The first principle is that whatever you believe in is totally irrelevant unless you are able to get elected.
On the way there you stress the beliefs and ideas that resonate with the voters and try to avoid bringing up issues where you are split.
I have as many concerns as anybody about the way the EU runs itself and spends our money. But the idea that we can have a future outside the EU is a nonsense.
124. I think many young people are pretty pro-europe actually (and indifferent to the difference between “europe” and “EU”. We are now well into the era of cheap Spanish holidays, metrication, champions league, open borders, united Germany, polish plumbers, Russian billionaires, etc. and anyone who can’t really remember the alternatives can surely be forgiven for wondering what all the fuss was about.
Not sure who said upthread that nobody knew that Cameron would be a leader to make the tories electable but it was pretty obvious to many of us on here.
When you look at recent contests you would have seen Brown being posited as a disaster, Cameron as a seachange, Campbell and Clegg as choices that would not help their party.
It’s not that difficult to foresee those sort of eventualities, politicians rarely surprise you.
126. It was worse than an error of judgement; it was a lack of conviction. Even if what you believe isn’t all that popular, people still respect you for putting the case.
In any case, I don’t think that a referendum would have done the Lib Dems any harm. They would almost certainly have lead the Yes campaign, if only because Labour would have tried to hide and put in the most perfunctory campaign. The Lib Dems might not have fished in a particularly big pool, but would have taken the majority of the catch. Even if a referendum had split 70-30 for No (and that’s probably a worst-case scenario for the Yes camp, once that side started getting some publicity), most of that 30% would be open to considering supporting the Lib Dems. True, there would be problems in the South West, but a referendum and a general election are different things and the voters down there know all about the Lib Dems views on the EU at the moment and it doesn’t stop people voting for them.
Going back to test’s original post at [108], I do think that views like that are symptomatic of thinking in a presidential style of politics, which isn’t always appropriate. Irrespective of Clarke’s views, could he have got any pro-Euro view through the Shadow Cabinet or Tory parliamentary party? And if he couldn’t - which is not much of an ‘if’ - he wouldn’t have been able to give even personal support in that position.
127 - Indeed, it is clear that many who self-identify as tories on here are much more hardline than Cameron will ever be, on issues from the EU to the BBC to whatever you care to mention.
A better home for them is actually across the pond in the current manifestation of the Republican party, a party which is far to the right of anything that would ever get mass support here.
@138:
Mike Smithson: the new Richard Nixon?
138 “But the idea that we can have a future outside the EU is a nonsense.”
Because obviously those massive countries Switzerland and Norway are both struggling to survive outside, along with the other 180ish countries who aren’t in? We may have some (dubious) influence in the EU, but we’d have a lot more in the rest of the world if we left.
139 Most people are pro-Europe - people like holidays there, and there are many good things about the various parts of Europe. Most of them have nothing to do with the EU. Europhilia is now a disease of late middle age and older - those people who remember when Britain couldn’t cope on its own back in the 70s.
137 test - Yes, probably some kind of ‘two-speed’ or ‘multi-speed’ Europe is likely, although those terms are misleading because they imply we’ll all be going in exactly the same direction but at different speeds. Instead, different countries will embrace different degrees of union. In practice, Europe is already in that position, with some countries adopting the Euro, Schengen, etc. (Isn’t is extraordinary to think that, just a few years ago, the hot topic was whether the UK would join the Euro? Blair could have done it, in his first term, when he had massive political capital.)
What I find less clear is how practical it will be for a future Conservative government to roll back some of the transfer of powers to Brussels, such as the Social Chapter and, perhaps, the provisions of the Lisbon Treaty. I’m sure they will want to, but it won’t be easy.
@142:
Nonsense. The modern GOP is little more than a pressure group for evangelical whining. That kind of politics is anathema to British civil society and the entire Tory way of thinking.
136. I think you need to read some Edmund Burke. MPs aren’t and shouldn’t be mere proxies for their electorate’s wishes. They should use their own judgment to do what they think is right. It’s the least they own their constituents.
138. But most Tories don’t want a future outside the EU, they just didn’t want to have a leader who would rush headlong into ever closer union. I would agree with your first principle, but equally getting elected serves no purpose unless you have some principles you want to put into practice. And that’s the point the conservatives have got to. They have a bright and instinctively eurosceptic leader who is going to get elected.
139. I think that is telling of the circles you move in. I know many young people who are modern, socially liberal and internationalist, but still have deep reservations about the EU.
146. That’s a bit unfair. The evangelicals are a minority. The Republicans are much more about being a conduit for shameless big business interest, whether such policies are about tax breaks, subsidies, free trade or tariffs.
142. People read whatever they want in Cameron.
@148:
Shameless genuflection towards the super-rich? That’s a Labour speciality.
O/T but does anyone know if Harrington is a non starter for BBC sports personality? I know he’s from Ireland but so was McGuigan who won (he comes from Monaghan in the Republic).
I notice that he doesn’t have a price on Betfair.
144 Two massive countries with a combined population equal to that of the Netherlands who have already pooled their borders with that of Schengen zone.
144. complete rubbish, anyone under 30 cannot remember holidays in Britain, imperial weights and measures, border crossings, travellers’ cheques…
152. You would think that smaller country would need to depend on neighbours more than larger countries.
147 - Surely the central point of many of Burke’s ideas was that MPs are MPs to represent the entire national interest rather than some sectional interest (such as that of the electors of Bristol, or of landowners or whatever). It is a fair enough point that many important issues for the nation don’t show up in opinion polls. But you should think very carefully before elevating a matter of minor importance to the public as a whole to the level of number one priority. I don’t really think Burke would necessarily recognise this “Europe is of vital importance if only people realised the fact…” stuff.
And in any event, the position of parties is rather different. Voting on your conscience is important for MPs, but parties set agendas and decide what the priorities are. That isn’t wholly a matter of conscience - it is a matter of appreciation of what people want the priorities to be.
146 - Exactly, it’s the ‘I want small government (but only for my benefit)’ element that exists in both.
The international approach too, where the ‘let’s bomb the bastards!’ tendency has always been rubbing up against the diplomatic tendency.
O/T - England cruising to victory in the test - where have they been?
151 - I think he will get overseas personality of the year.
For UK sports Personality you are looking at Cavendish in cycling, Lewis Hamilton or one of the athletes, perhaps Radcliffe if she wins the marathon.
124. Casino Royale on the EU:
“…it’s undemocratic and overbearing…”
“The next Conservative government will reform the EU.”
The notion that a government only accountable in the UK can singularly have such influence across Europe seems somewhat undemocratic and overbearing itself.
155. Burke also believed in an MP doing what they believed was right for the national interest, even if the public disagreed, whether it be on a national or constituency level.
Yes, I agree the priorities of parties should be aligned with the public. We should talk about health, education, poverty etc. I’m not one to believe in a William Hague flag-waving campaign. But that doesn’t mean MPs should elect a leader who believed in a policy they thought would be disastrous for Britain. Mike was suggesting they should do, purely for the sake of getting elected.
124: “if you’re over 60, you’ll well-up for the EU because of WWII. You sweep any inconvenient “facts” under the table. End of.If you’re under 45, you recognise it’s undemocratic and overbearing and want a looser union. End of”
144: “Europhilia is now a disease of late middle age and older - those people who remember when Britain couldn’t cope on its own back in the 70s.”
These are just rubbish. Polls consistently show that older people are more hostile towards the EU, younger people more positive. Here’s a recent example link. I am not aware of any polling that contradicts the trend.
141 on the contrary, David Herdson, he always made it quite clear that he would campaign for the EU come what may. And of course the PM appoints the Cabinet. He could simply have appointed a majority of supporters.
It was and is an issue of conscience for him, and not one on which he was prepared to be gainsaid.
151. Nah - he’ll win overseas personality. He wouldn’t win in Olympic year anyway.
157 - The trouble with cycling is that there may well be a few and split the vote (Hoy, Pendleton, Wiggins, Cavendish, Cooke, take your pick).
160 how did younger people vote in the Irish No, Anthony? any breakdown on demographic groups there?
162 - Just wondered if there was a rule as McGuigan was considered acceptable but betfair suggested he was a non-starter.
163. Cavendish is already a class above most british sports people in terms of worldwide success in a popular sport, but even with olympic gold he is likely to be pipped by a nobody from the world of motor sport, as is the tradition.
152 As Socrates said, my point was that we are much larger than they are, and therefore need the EU less than they do, ie not at all. Free trade with Europe is a good thing, but free trade with the whole world (prevented in part by the EU) would be better.
153 Yes - my point being that as things have improved here, we need (or think we need) the EU/Common Market/EEC/EC less to support us, hence opinion has moved against the EU. Labour have done well to start on the wrong side (wanting to leave when we should have stayed in) and ended up on the wrong side (wanting to throw more powers to the EU when we should leave)
157 - I would have thought that with all the fuss surrounding him that Tom Daley is a shoo-in for the youth prize?
168 - No chance, Laura Robson, the girl who won Junior Wimbledon.
169 - Maybe, I’d forgotten about her.
167. if we were to leave the EU, London would be sure to lose its position as the centre of global trade which underpins our financial services based economy. like it or not, the biggest money flows are already between USD and EUR.
171. Um, why? London traders make plenty of money by trading in different currencies. Why would that change?
171 In the same way that that would happen if we didn’t join the Euro? I thought it was the regulatory environment that brought the financial trade here, ie not being New York?
160. What about in other countries?
171. The same argument was put forward when pro-Euro campaigners were telling us that the City of London would lose its position unless we joined the Euro. Since the introduction of the Euro the reverse has happened.
153 - Ed, I might miss out on your cut-off point by 3 years (I’m 33) but I do know quite a few under 30s - and in my experience there’s a massive difference amongst the young between liking Europe the continent and liking ‘Europe’ the political institutions. Most people I know that are younger than me are pretty internationalist in outlook, but I don’t think I’ve ever met a Europhile younger than me.
I also think you’re being a bit premature about the demise of Imperial. I don’t know anyone who meausres their weight in kilograms or their height in metres, nor distance in kilometres.
Re. 101, yes, Clarke’s behaviour was downright vile in the debate with IDS. He came across as a red-faced ranter, and was at his overbearing and bullying worst. IDS dealt quite well with it - I half expected him to echo Reagan’s ‘There you go again’.
Portillo as Ted Heath? There are similarities. The description of him ignoring people at the BBC studios on the night of the local election results, sitting there reading a book and totally ignoring his fellow guests, was worthy of Ted in his sulky prime.
The Hindu : Pro-Russia
This newspaper is by far the best English-language one in India.
And it is taking a stance resolutely pro-Russia:
Georgia’s adventurism in attacking and attempting brutally to take military control of the breakaway region of South Ossetia had zero chance of success, given the geopolitical circumstances.
…
Within three days, it announced it had pulled out to avoid a “humanitarian catastrophe,” although Russia has disputed this.
…
Its military achievement has been to devastate Tskhinvali, the South Ossetian capital, kill more than 2,000 civilians (most of them Russian citizens), and create 34,000 refugees, according to Russian and South Ossetian estimates.
Russia maintains a peace keeping force in South Ossetia under a 1992 agreement and the Georgian attack… killed 13 Russian soldiers and injured more than 150.
…
It is not clear what President Mikheil Saakashvili — a diehard ally of the United States who has, among other things, sent Georgian soldiers to fight alongside American troops in Iraq and is seeking membership for his country in NATO — expected to achieve on the ground.
…
Mr. Shaakashvili, whose political agenda included reasserting Georgian control over the three rebel regions of Ajaria, Abkhazia, and South Ossetia, has been left with a bloody nose. To make matters worse, Abkhazian fighters have launched a major military offensive against the Georgian forces to drive them out of a strategic foothold in the breakaway Black Sea region.
http://www.hindu.com/2008/08/11/stories/2008081165270800.htm
177- Gordon will be the new Ted Heath.
I’m 29, and I haven’t a clue what I weigh in kg, or how tall I am in cm. 6′ and 12 stone though…
Oh, and in no possible fashion a Europhile.
173,5. that is true, and it didn’t happen, although I reckon if we were part of the Euro (i’m glad we aren’t btw) London could be an even bigger financial centre than it is, and would be channeling trade away from places like Frankfurt.
“This newspaper is by far the best English-language one in India.”
On what basis? What about Mint, the Daily Pioneer, the Hindustan Times, the Indian Express…?
178 - I have just returned from Finland, which of course borders Russia.
The Finnish press have no sympathy for Georgia. The government line appears to be “well what do you expect Russia to do.”
The Finnish experience may be based on their Continuation War with Russia in 1942. The Finns launched a counter attack well beyond the 1917 border, and were driven back and humiliated, losing territory and having to pay reparations.
My own view is that the Russians have greatly over-reacted,but it was pretty obvious they would. Saakashvili is an idiot, but his presidency has been a total failure and was on his way out, and this action of his was to buy popularity, or perhaps prevent an election happening. Had he not done this, he’d have had to rig the election to get re-elected, which he would surely have tried.
We should be well out of this one. And Georgia should be back of the queue to join NATO.
But of course Saakashvili is US educated and a friend of Bush - how silly of me!
I see Brown is to write another book for publication in March 2009, on his favourite topic of Britishness.
Has he not got bigger things to deal with, like saving his skin, avoiding the electoral destruction of his party, and er, like, running the country…?
Another political gift for his opponents. And for Salmond particularly!
Anglo-American-Israeli interests vs Russia
“Moscow has repeatedly demanded that Jerusalem halt its military assistance to Georgia, finally threatening a crisis in bilateral relations. Israel responded by saying that the only assistance rendered Tbilisi was ‘defensive.’” The Israeli news source added that Israel’s interest in Georgia has to do as well with Caspian oil pipeline geopolitics. “Jerusalem has a strong interest in having Caspian oil and gas pipelines reach the Turkish terminal port of Ceyhan, rather than the Russian network. Intense negotiations are afoot between Israel Turkey, Georgia, Turkmenistan and Azarbaijan for pipelines to reach Turkey and thence to Israel’s oil terminal at Ashkelon and on to its Red Sea port of Eilat. From there, supertankers can carry the gas and oil to the Far East through the Indian Ocean.”
This means that the attack on South Ossetia is the first battle in a new proxy warfare between Anglo-American-Israeli led interests and Russia.
http://www.globalresearch.ca/index.php?context=va&aid=9790
————
Vladimir Frolov : Georgia Set the Perfect Trap
“It is not clear how the conflict will develop. Georgia has a clear interest in portraying this as a Russian invasion of a sovereign county, and Tbilisi may continue to engage in military skirmishes with Russian forces. The West will insist on the complete Russian pullout. Abkhazia may try to take advantage of the conflict while Georgia is entangled in a fight with Russia.:
http://www.themoscowtimes.com/article/1016/42/369706.htm
176. i accept the difference you highlight, but there is surely a correlation between “liking Europe the continent”/being internationalist and being favourable to the idea of an EU.
meanwhile, newsflash, imperial measures are on the way out! they have not been taught in schools for a long time, while the inherent advantages of metric are taught to all schoolkids nowadays.
i take your point that certain parts of the system are more entrenched than others (miles vs. km is a good example) but it is a matter of time.
184. “Great Britons of Courage and Decisiveness” ?
@181:
The City of London has always been able to define its success by distancing itself from the basket-case financial markets of France and Germany.
You can hardly do that if you’ve allowed yourself to be enslaved by them.
Funny, though, that the City of London seems to be doing Just Fine Thank You, despite all the protestations of doom from the Federasts about what would happen if we didn’t join the Euro and submit to the Bundesbank^H^H^H^H^H^H^H^H^HECB’s will immediately.
184 - Maybe he wants at least one record, he is going for the obscure trivial pursuit question of the PM who published the most books whilst in office!
183 - SBS
Vladimir Frolov seems to think that Saakashvili made a good move “to bolster his domestic support by appearing strong and standing up to the Russian bear, while making a serious move to restore Georgia’s sovereignty over South Ossetia”.
re 7 well Ermintrude that depends whether you think the NHS is being run successfully or not? Perhaps you think paying private sector providers for doing nothing, or having the NHS expend money to correct botched private sector operations (of course, the private sector never get penalised for shoddy work), or Sir Richard Branson growing wealthier off the back of your sick granny means that it is successful.
184. The trouble for those of us who believe in Britain is that Brown has tainted the notion of Britishness, perhaps irreparably. He is becoming the single biggest threat to the union both in Scotland and England.
We need to get him out before it is too late.
186 - I wouldn’t say correlation, because that implies some parallelism or symmetry.
Being a fan of Europe as a continent, and being internationalist are necessary (but by no means sufficient) conditions for supporting the EU. The degree of insufficiency is what we are arguing about.
180. interesting, I generally quote my height and weight in cm/kg to anyone under 30, and reactions vary widely.
SAAKASHVILI : The Kremlin designed this war
http://online.wsj.com/article/SB121841306186328421.html?mod=opinion_main_commentaries
186 - Untrue!
I am 37. I was not taught imperial measures at school. However, they have returned to the maths syllabus in recent years and are now required to be taught under the National Curriculum.
194 - My reaction would be “What’s that in English?”
185 - “Anglo-American-Israeli interests”
Pathetic, trying to stir up a war in the middle east on the back of Russian nationalism.
Quite, quite disgusting.
188. Yes - people like ‘Ed’ were loudly arguing a decade ago that Frankfurt would take London’s place as the main European financial centre. How laughable.
193. i don’t think it implies any such thing, it would be possible to be a fan of the EU for solely business reasons, whilst remaining an outrageous xenophobe.
alternately, one could spend most of one’s life travelling the world, taking every opportunity of improved international “relations” in the name of literature whilst also taking advantage of improved communications to post regular anti-EU rants on pb.com.
re 15 well two-thirdsish of the Tory members obviously did. Of course they were even more mentally impaired in rejecting a sure fire election winner (and the real most successful recent Chancellor).
Russia Opens Second Front In War on Georgia
Russian troops were reported to be advancing on the Kodori Gorge, a foothold of ethnic Georgians in the region. The rebel government of Abkhazia announced a general mobilization of its militia for a state of war.
So here we go: after South Ossetia, Russia invades Abkhazia.
Seriously: who wanna bet US 200$ @ 2 to 1 — I being the underdog — that Russia will also invade Ajaria?
@194:
You just do that to be awkward, admit it. Then when people look at you strangely, you call them Tory Scum, tweak their nipples and then run away giggling.
I know your sort.
Just for ya, UKPaul:
The trigger for such a war is not Georgia’s right to annex South Ossetia and Abkhazia. Rather, it is US insistence on pushing NATO and its missile defense right up to Russia’s door.
http://www.globalresearch.ca/index.php?context=va&aid=9790
Nate Silver has an excellent article on ‘The Myth of the Bradley Effect’, a must-read for anyone following US polls closely, as a guide to betting and otherwise.
http://www.fivethirtyeight.com/
202 — http://www.nysun.com/foreign/russia-opens-second-front-in-war-on-georgia/83570/
193 Being internationalist has little to do with the EU, which is very protectionist -it’s a rather limited internationalism that stops at 27 countries
re 180/194 when aligning the crews in a rowing race you have to speak to the people holding the ends of the boats (who are invariably young kids) in metric or they don’t know what you mean. Makes it difficult for some of my older colleagues.
197. Mine too. I can do my weight in stones, and in just pounds, but would only have a vague idea in kg (i.e. the right order of magnitude).
199 - Especially for you, a BBC piece from 1999:
http://news.bbc.co.uk/1/hi/events/the_launch_of_emu/inside_emu/225425.stm
And just by way of comparison, a German-penned piece from 2008 supporting Frankfurt:
http://www.die-bank.de/index.asp?issue=042002&art=179
196. I didn’t know that, fair enough. They are still on the way out though, driven by the simple fact that metric/SI is more convenient for scientific and international usage.
My (limited) investigations into a completely separate question, “are exams getting easier?” have included looking at maths/physics papers from decades past. The most obvious difference, to my eye, is that much of the inherent difficulty of the old papers lies in the convoluted and incompatible imperial units being used. It was perfectly possible to set a taxing mathematics test for quite old kids by asking them how many pence chance they got from a guinea after spending x shillings.
I think the whole Russian conflict is proof if proof were needed that Medvedev is a puppet and the strings go straight back to Putin. I suspect that ultimately what Putin is aiming at is destabilising his weaker neighbours and then moving in to ‘assist’ them in stabilising the situation. It is clear that Putin is a product of the Cold War, clearly enjoyed it from his KGB offices and wants to recreate it 21st Century style. My guess is that whether this war ends quickly the ultimate aim will be to subsume Georgia back into Russia or at least to turn Georgia into a client state and ergo influence the oil pipelines.
“An election about Obama”
There is a certain shrewdness in the McCain campaign’s effort to turn Obama’s strengths — the energy he excites in crowds, the historic nature of his candidacy and the interest he has created overseas — into weaknesses.
“They’re trying to make lemonade out of a lemon,” said one Democratic strategist who is not working for the Obama campaign. “It’s not a bad thing to do, but it’s a sign of weakness.”
Thus the effort to turn Obama into the incumbent. McCain loses if the election becomes a referendum on Bush. He is running behind on most issues. And he has yet to generate the commitment among his own supporters that Obama has inspired in his camp.
The one contest McCain can win is an election about Obama.
http://www.realclearpolitics.com/articles/2008/08/making_obama_the_incumbent.html
re 21 so Ermintrude, you like Gabble, equate decreased spending with nurses having to raise money at flag days. So where’s the £1bn fuel payment (uncosted) bribe going to come from?
211 - If you want to know how much progress has been made with the metric system, I suggest you have a look on dating websites and see which units of measurements are used. Imperial units are used far more often than metric units in all age groups (*my friends tell me, cough*).
@215:
Really? But 10cm sounds far more impressive than 4″.
V-P Market : Time to lay Palin…
Republican Gov. Sarah Palin and Alaska’s Legislature last year approved a major increase in taxes on the oil industry
http://seattletimes.nwsource.com/html/localnews/2008103325_alaskatax07.html
216 - 4″ is a hand. If it’s anything else, you have my sympathy.
210 What’s it matter? I’m too short and fat, however measured.
213 - And on that note, the best time to start using the campaign ammunition you’ve been storing up is when your opponent has overplayed his hand -
http://my.barackobama.com/page/content/embrace_ad
210. Thanks for that - what amusing reading. From the first piece we have
‘Instead it {the ECB] has its headquarters in Germany’s financial centre Frankfurt, which is now a serious pretender to London’s crown.’
and
‘A survey by property consultants Healey & Baker indicated that almost half of all senior executives in Europe believe Frankfurt could supersede London as Europe’s financial capital’
The first snippet shows how lazy journalistic standards at the BBC are, and how coloured by political preconceptions. The second shows how superficial the views of many so-called ‘opinion formers/business leaders’ are.
But the best bit is from the second link…
‘at least for as long as Britain stays out of EMU, it is likely to be the leading eurozone financial centre’
It seems Frankfurt has adjusted its ambitions down just a little bit since 1999, nicht wahr?
VP Market
Obama Campaign: Sign up today to be the first to know:
http://my.barackobama.com/vp
215. don’t know about that.
i look at various sports and see varying degrees of acceptability. last time this came up in conversation(*) was with some young lads i play cricket with, who all chose to use metric, and wanted to know the conversion from imperial. ironically the game was against possibly the most conservative british institution out there, MCC
* it wasn’t quite as dull as you think, but long story
221 - The first link should be required reading for anyone who is tempted to put their trust in opinion formers. It’s also a gem of an example of how the BBC can suffer from latent bias towards views that fit its preconceived expectations.
Well I am over 60 and use metric weights and measures: it’s only muppets who use imperial. Indeed we picked 66 lbs of raspberries.. sorry 30 kg - this year:-)
Blanket generalisations on the issue are the speciality of the ranters.
215… staying on a sporting theme, pretty much anyone nowadays will run, swim, cycle, or row in metres, and weights are lifted in kgs. anyone doing any sort of elite sport nowadays will be measuring in metric, it has gone all scientific. that will trickle down.
penalties are still 12 yards of course, and cricket still played over 22yds, but these are becoming isolated examples. rugby has gone over fairly wholesale.
209. As possibly the youngest poster on the site, I can deal with feet for my own height and stones for my own weight, but only because I’ve learnt them off by heart. Couldn’t estimate for someone else or deal in any smaller units.
I much prefer grams and metres, they’re very simple. I’d even prefer it if we could switch from miles to kilometers.
@226:
Well, I think we should move to a system of Mesopotamian’s sexagesimal base units. For a laugh.
And the National Speed Limit should be 215,040 furlongs per fortnight.
212 - the US wants Georgia run by its puppet Saakashvili; Putinmedvedev wants his puppet.
228. A sexagesimal or dodecimal base system would be far more sensible than decimal.
229. Saakashvili was elected.
226 - “cricket still played over 22yds”
Not sure. Think it might be over 20m in NZ.
225 - Me? I’m 40 and ambidextrous. I was taught exclusively in metric at school, and I assume that was true for everyone of my generation.
Like a lot of people, I use whichever sounds best. So weight loss is in pounds, because there are more units for the same amount of weight loss (interestingly, my mother measures weight loss in kilos - she has lost a lot of weight recently though, and I’m not sure she wants people to know what weight she was beforehand). Hot temperatures are in Fahrenheit - “it was 90 in the shade!” - and cold temperatures in Celsius - “it was minus five last night”. In most social circumstances, this rarely causes confusion.
226 - I have seen no evidence of any of my contemporaries (and those much younger) talking other than in miles, yards, feet and inches, stones and pounds, and beer and milk in pints. Only in the measurement of foodstuffs, liquids apart from beer and milk, or scientific drawing/measurement, does metric appear to have dominance. And I’m from a generation that was brought up on the metric system in school, with imperial measurement airbrushed out of our nation’s history 1984-style.
@232:
But the LAWS OF CRICKET say that the pitch must be one chain in length, that being 22 of Her Majesty’s finest yards.
Ed - I accept that metric units are better to teach in (for ease-of-arithmetic reasons above all else) but I don’t think imperial units are on their way out just yet. For one thing, they’re so much quicker to say.
I take your point about the correlation between being internationalist and liking the EU, but we Europhiles aren’t ALL grumpy red-nosed ex-colonels in golf clubs.
Meanwhile, on your point in exams getting easier - I remember when I did A Level maths (in 1993) taking a series of papers from the early 80s up to 1992 (none of which contained anything in imperial, of course) and being surprised at how hard the early papers were and how comparatively easy the latter ones were. Could have all been down to sylabus changes, of course, but I’d say there was more to it than that.
205 - That’s another great piece by Nate.
I was penning my own take on the Bradley effect, which was going to argue that it is solely a North-East/Californian phenomenon, for the same reasons he identified (his analysis does identify a couple of percent overperformance by Hillary in that region).
I still think there is a degree of truth, because I lost money betting on states like CA, NJ, NY, MA where the polls seemed to say he was within striking distance, and then he lost comfortably. This might have been outweighed by the opposite in the South, but it did cost me (and would have done in RI, NH, and MD as well). That said, this might be a function of Nate’s second argument - that the best polls for Obama just got more publicity, warping my perception.
Either that is true, or his use of the trend-line of the final 3 polls in the preceding 14 days warps the data in a different way. If Clinton polled +8, +9, +11 I would estimate a win by about +9.5, whereas the trend line might suggest an increasing lead hitting 13%, so that could mask Obama’s underperformance/Bradley.
Great piece though - worth a read.
@233:
I quote all temperatures in nanokelvins.
(Close the blahdy window, it’s 2.9×10^11 nanokelvins in ‘ere)
“re 130. The first principle is that whatever you believe in is totally irrelevant unless you are able to get elected. ”
But when you get elected, what then?
“On the way there you stress the beliefs and ideas that resonate with the voters and try to avoid bringing up issues where you are split. ”
The Conservatives are pretty united when it comes to the EU. Those who support closer political integration are a vanishingly small minority within the party.
“I have as many concerns as anybody about the way the EU runs itself and spends our money. But the idea that we can have a future outside the EU is a nonsense.”
Why? Life hadn’t come to an end before we joined, and life wouldn’t come to an end if we ceased to be in it.
230. you will have to explain that comment; i can’t think of a single perspective from which it is true.
Didn’t Napolean do everything in dodecimal? Isn’t that why his engineers never actually dug the Channel Tunnel?
231 - yes, he did do rather well first time to get 96%.
TVs and monitor screen are measured in inches in much of Europe.
241 - I know revolutionary France had decimal time, really quite weird.
@240:
Prime factors, dear. It has them, we wants them.
243. France - weird - surely not?
Mike ‘Europe makes my dongle work’ Smithson has today jumped the shark. I always thought his constant and tedious assertion that “no one cares about Europe blah blah blah” (Mike, we get this, you don’t have to keep repeating, save your dwinding energies) was just the reflexive attitude of a psephological wonk with europhile tendencies.
But his strange hysterical rant today (”obsession”, “pathetic” etc etc) is rather telling. What does it matter to you, Mike, what the Tories think or do about Europe? Why do you care? You’re a Lib Dem. Surely you WANT the Tories to obsess about Europe, if you think this obsession is so counter-productive? Mmm?
No. I think I’ve worked it out. Mike, as a committed and pensionable europhile, is worried that the Tories might, this time, actually do something seriously eurosceptic, when they are in government. He’s got the heebie-jeebies.
For the first time, the ageing europhiles (and most of them are ageing) are frit.
Good.
@243:
If only we could change the speed of the Earth’s rotation to meet our arbitrary need to impose regularity on our units.
217 - Palin was already out of the running due to the business about firing her brother in law. She is a very loose canon and McCain will not risk her.
236. didn’t mean to say europhiles were any such thing, but instead that widespread acceptance of “european” things will lead to acceptance of the EU, and that is clearly the case with the younger generation, in direct contradiction to 224. and 244..
I didn’t really want to fully open the exams can of worms, I just brought it up to mention that even the most simple of physics questions was fundamentally much harder when dealing in ergs, calories, pounds and ounces, etc. which is why the SI system was embraced
Cheer up everyone… Scot Andy Murray lost in the first round at the Olympics. He lost to a Taiwanese player - that should annoy the Chinese authorities.
226 - “rugby has gone over wholesale” - and no complaints about that from me; talking about ‘the 22′ seems somehow more satisfyingly idiosynchratic than ‘the 25′.
Talking of athletics, my ability to estimate distcance in metres rather than feet stems almost entirely from knowing how far 100m is (because that’s how far you have to run in a 100m sprint). I’ll still call it 100 yards though because it doesn’t take as long to say.
But who decided the middle-middle distance race should be 1500m rather than 1600m? 1600m would have been a nice neat arithmetical progression, would have been almost EXACTLY a mile and would have been a whole number of laps of the track thereby substantially simplifying the mental arithmetic involved in running it. The only people to benefit from that decision are the wheezy fat kids for whom 1500m is an annual exercise in physical torture and humiliation.
@249:
Except, Ed, several “younger generations” have grown up against the backdrop of the European Project, and this country has become more Eurohostile with time, not less.
[citation needed], perhaps?
226 Ed - In Deutschland, a penalty is an Elfmeter.
And no, an Elfmeter is not a device for measuring the frequency of elves.
@250:
If China were really annoyed, they wouldn’t have allowed the Taiwanese team entry in the first place.
Hooray for constructive ambiguity. Somebody could do with sending a parcel of that to South Ossetia.
Changing from miles to kilometres would be as absurd and pointless a waste of an enormous amount of money as Labour’s ID card folly.
241. I think he reverted to duodecimal measurement, but not a duodecimal base system. Combining duodecimal measurements with a decimal system is the worst of both worlds in my book, even if I am useless at metric.
255 - Look out for it in Gordon’s relaunch then.
246 And you, SeanT, are not aging, but grow younger and lovelier every day.
249. Why would acceptance of Europe lead to acceptance of the EU? I have only grown more pro-European as I have got older, and at the same time become more anti-EU. What most wooly pro-EU people don’t realise is that there is more to the institution than international governance. It’s about corruption, patronage and unaccountability.
Is that just a poorly chosen photo of this Mr. Johnson or is he really the ugliest man around since the passing of Joseph Merrick? I was actually frightened for a moment when I saw that picture.
244. you aren’t serious
249, 252 Save that, the electoral evidence suggests otherwise. We have UKIP, a (not very successful) political party that can, in general elections, persuade 600,000 people to vote for it, when it has no chance of being elected, and a couple of million in a Euro election. It didn’t exist in 1973.
Likewise, we have a Conservative Party that is now really opposed to European political integration, whereas back in 1973, it was in favour.
So people haven’t become keener on the EU since then, despite the fact that today’s 50+ plus voters were teenagers then.
252. Check out Anthony Wells post at 160.
The man knows everything about psephology. Bow down before him.
250 Except the BBC has to refer to Taiwan as the ludicrous “Chinese Taipei”, yes I know that’s what’s on the back of his shirt but why this pandering to the Chinese workldview?
“Britain’s Andy Murray went down 6-7 (5/7) 4-6 in a shock first-round defeat by Chinese Taipei’s Lu Yen-Hsun in the men’s singles at the Beijing Olympics.”
252. the polling hostility comes from the old, as Anthony has pointed out.
it is also well worth pointing out that the “eurohostility” you talk about is of a completely different scale and character to the eurohostility of previous generations.
241 I believe a couple of blokes called Nelson and Wellesley may have had a bit to do with it.
264: That’s the name Taiwan itself chooses to use.
Most young people know nothing about politics. The poll someone linked to above shows this. There are much higher numbers of ‘don’t know’s for all questions about Lisbon and the EU, because many 18-25 year olds don’t think about politics much (which is probably healthy). The knee-jerk reaction of young people is more likely to be pro-EU because the EU is a nice fluffy thing and being against it sounds like being against foreigners. Most young people have no more political nous than that. I don’t think people’s political opinions at 18 are a reliable guide to what they will be a few years later. The whole federalist cause is based on the erroneous belief that some generational shift will see people cease to care about their nation. And this belief is held twenty years after the end of the soviet experience! Look around the world - is there any political force stronger than nationalism? The federalists are the equivalent of those nineteenth century socialists who genuinely believed that after the revolution the family would dissipate as a social force.
As an illustration of my claims about young people: a europhile friend of mine - with a first in Philosophy from a Russell group University, no less - was absolutely adamant that Switzerland was in the EU. He simply wouldn’t believe me when I informed him otherwise. Why? Switzerland = neutral = no war = EU. Young people’s worlds are formed of such fluff.
251. I think the origin of the 1500m distance is in France where they used to have 500m tracks so it was 3 laps. In American high-schools they all race 1600m instead.
115 But again please explain why in 1997 did Blair concede a referendum on the Euro. He was way ahead and heading for a landslide. Certainly even up to Iraq he had enormous capital and could have gone for it. If it matters so little in practice please explain why he didn’t do what he dearly wanted and simply stick euro entry in either the 1997 or 2001 manifestos.
[113] - “OT: South Ossetia (and Abkhazia) seem no nearer peace. I wonder if this will become seen as the first gambit of a new, energy-fuelled Cold War.”
I would have thought that future historians would see such a thread running back to the invasion of Iraq, surely?
“it is also well worth pointing out that the “eurohostility” you talk about is of a completely different scale and character to the eurohostility of previous generations”
Indeed it is. It’s a good deal stronger.
@264:
Phil, “Taiwan” isn’t its proper name either. Taiwan is simply the largest island in the group, including the Pescadores, Kinmen and Matsu, under the de facto control of the Republic of China.
Constructive amibiguity is good. Embrace it.
270 - cowardice. Same reason he never sacked Brown. Didn’t have the stones.
@265:
No, Ed, it doesn’t. There is a clear, large majority against European integration amongst all demographic tranches.
Presumably, however, you live in a world in which younger generations do not grow up to be older ones?
The BBC also refer to Murray at British, when we all know he is most definitely Scottish.
274 Cullions, Animal. It’s PB word of the month.
Has anyone considered that the abandonment of Imperial measures may have had the unintended effect of reducing facility in basic arithmetic, mental and written?
SFAIR nobody seemed to have much trouble working out sums or change based on the old pound. My father left school at 13 and calculating overtime, say 6 hours at time and a half with a basic hourly rate of 8s 4d was no trouble at all. It was a common-place sort of calculation - put it to someone today and see what happens.
Factors were more flexible, too.
£1 = 100p factors 2, 5, 10, 20, 25, 50.
£1 = 240d factors 2, 3, 4, 5, 6, 8, 10, 12, 15, 20, 24, etc.
And I don’t know about you, but when it comes to cutting up a cake, it ain’t in decimal style, it’s half, quarters, eights and so on.
Napoleon wasn’t very happy with the decimal system, though he thought it’d do until something better came along. But it didn’t.
Oh, and another influence - the advent of pocket calculators - they don’t work without decimal point type maths.
For myself, brought up with Imperial, though a career in the sciences for the past 40+ plus years meant accepting decimal, for professional purposes, anyway. Though even now Centigrade is temperature, but Fahrenheit is weather; mass is kilograms and spuds are in pounds. Simple, really.
276 JackW says he’s both, SBS. Surely he would know?
265 The majority against the Lisbon Treaty ranges from 2-1 against, among the 18-34 age group, to 4-1 among the 65+ age group. It would seem that the more people come to a conclusion on the issue, the more likely they are to be eurosceptic.
268. the arguments on both sides include some pretty ill-informed, illogical drivel. but i think it would be unwise to dismiss polling evidence because young people don’t know anything
255 — you said it!
And I’ll tell you something else: the number of people resisting Labour’s ID cards will utterly dwarf those few, high-profile ‘metric martyrs’.
277 - I look forward to September. Perhaps SeanT can surprise us with more anatomical archaisms.
@281:
We’re not dismissing it, merely pointing out that 2:1 against Lisbon is only a start. As they grow older they’ll only resent the EU more and more.
This is what the polling shows. Young people start out hating the EU only a little bit, and then grow into the full fury of their Eurohostility by about 35.
@277/283:
Can “rebarbative” be September’s word of the month?
284 - you wouldn’t happen to be in your mid-thirties, would you, Martin?
278 - Indeed, it is amazing the number of kids who cannot do arithmetic with fractions. I can well remember having to add a third to a half or multiply three quarters by one eighth. Nowadays you mostly get a blank look.
278. i think you are almost certainly right that there is an effect.
on the other side of the coin the SI system makes it easier
* to understand some physical relationships between units, e.g. i know offhand how much a litre of water weighs and how much space it takes up, i know by looking at it how much electric a lightbulb uses per second, etc.
* by working in the same framework (the decimal system) experience in weights is useful in measures, etc. whereas extensive experience weighing grain in imperial is not even useful when weighing precious metals…
272. no. germany is no longer an “enemy”, for a start.
268. We should also take into account the continental psyche in all this. To them the ‘Nation State’, is a source of failure, a source of oppression and aggression. The Nation State either showed itself incapable of defending people from attack, or was the attacker.
To us, in the UK, it was the strong nation state, and nationalism which got us through the war, and allowed us (with the help of our other allies) to defend against an unprecedented level of aggression.
267 NO they don’t choose it. It is the only way China would let the IOC let them compete without a boycott. Hence they have to with that moniker.
@286:
No, but I’m working on it.
289. Germany has not been an enemy since 1945. But, the European Union exists, and has existed for one reason, and one reason only, the fear of a powerful and dominant German state.
Serious question: do ‘cullions’ definitely mean the same as ‘cojones’, ‘goolies’, and ’stones’?
I was at ‘Edward II’ by Marlowe at the Battersea Arts Centre last week (a friend has just won a Directing Award), and in Act I, scene iv, the following from Mortimer (Younger):
“He wears a lord’s revenue on his back,
And Midas-like, he jets it in the court,
With base outlandish cullions at his heels”
…which implies ‘cullions’ are dogs of some sort.
Cameron making the weather again..
http://news.bbc.co.uk/2/hi/uk_news/politics/7553508.stm
292 - You don’t have to work on it, it will happen all by itself. One day you may even be as old as Jack W!
280, 284. if a referendum was called on Lisbon and/or the EU generally in the next year or two, what is your view of what the result would be, in percentage terms?
my view is that it would be less than 10% margin one way or the other, you both seem to think a landslide for “no” would be inevitable? is that right?
Sean, do you really think that the older people get the more they “come to a conclusion”?
287 - but how useful is most arithmetic with fractions.
Can you think of an example of when you would need to divide 3 and 3 quarters by 1 and a third?
naturally people are more hostile to the EU now than 20 years ago -the EU has taken far too much power without proper consent, imposes bad policies reached through flawed processes and costs way too much. Sure,in the 80s i used to believe the EU didn’t matter very much, but have changed my mind because of these basic facts, not prejudices. Indeed it was an a bit of an irrelevant irritant in the 80s (like Shirley Williams), but is now serious bad news.
Can’t understand those who still support the EU process but at the same time claim they don’t believe in a superstate. if you don’t believe in a superstate then logically at some point integration has to stop. in which case why not now?
Sarkozy is heading to Tbilisi.
Why on earth W. Bush (or one prestigious surrogate) is not traveling to Georgia? — which was, and still is, a country who supported the U.S. in Iraq…
Why?
290 - A good point, also other countries will know better how nations fail, how elections can take a country down a dangerous path and, above all, how nationalism can take hold and lead a country to destruction. whether it be Germany, Serbia and so on.
291. Amazing how the BBC can be so craving when they want to be. If Israel was holding the Olympics, and forced the Palestine entry to be called Canaan, do you think the BBC would be so servile?
300. Blair no longer available - and Brown busy with a book fair.
293. there are plenty of old people who still think of Germany as the enemy. i can’t agree that that is the current motivating force of the EU.
294 - You are right, it is not synonymous with cojones, a cullion is a rascal/rogue or someone worthy of disdain or contempt.
“South Ossetia is Russia’s Kosovo”
http://blogs.telegraph.co.uk/harry_de_quetteville/blog/2008/08/11/georgia_comparing_kosovo_and_south_ossetia
287. true, but they are relative whizzkids with decimal, and that is more useful than it used to be.
281
“young people don’t know anything”
Is this why Labour are so keen to give votes to 16 year olds?
298. As often as I’m required to divide 5.635 by 2.277.
294 - “cullion” has two meanings. The second (more archaic) meaning is “a mean or base fellow”.
Of course, given Edward II’s proclivities, context could be important…
@297:
My guess would be at least 3:1 against, probably higher.
300 - Because the White House has learned the hard way how counterproductive that sort of thing often is.
They’ve blundered around enough, inflaming situations and so on that even they are starting to understand that diplomacy is necessary.
294 In Shakespeare ‘cullions’ is used for rascals (Henry V - Fluellen “Up to the breach, you dogs! avaunt, you cullions!”) and for testicles (Gertrude in Hamlet talks of the rude words for flowers - priest’s pintle, dogstones and goat’s cullions) - checked the meaning out when SeanT suggested it.
The Republic of China is commonly referred to Taiwan in English, so I’d expect the BBC to call it that. The RoC presumably has to call itself “Chinese Taipei” or it wouldn’t have got into the Olympics.
On metric - I’m 43 and was brought up in metric, but of course my parents used imperial so I’m bilingual… I tend to switch between the two for convenience but generally use miles, pints, pounds, feet. Temperature is centigrade, and whenever doing DIY I use either metric or imperial depending on which gives the most precise/easy reading e.g. if it’s 4.5″ exactly I’ll use that rather than the metric equivalent. As imperial measurements are now all defined in metric, I really see no difference between us ordering a quarter of cheese and an Italian ordering an etto.
Surely it’s a freedom of speech issue - if I want to refer to weights and measures in one way or another, I should be able to. Imperial is traditional system in the UK and for some purposes (eg easy divisability, size of unit) it can be considered superior to metric. Many people feel that it is one of those things that is important to British/UK culture and I think it should therefore continue to be allowed to exist alongside metric measurements, and for shops to sell in such units if they wish.
305 - Although further to that, the old english word coilon was used in the context of genitalia, which derives from the latin culleus meaning sack or bag.
281. I’m dismissing the claim that the polling shows young people are becoming more pro-EU. More young people would support decomissioning nuclear weapons, but that says something about youth, not about a changing population.
regarding the metric/imperial debate I was taught both systems at school in the 70s. they both have their pros and cons. i still use both professionally as the industry in which i work (oil and gas) is still largely imperial because of the US influence. given the choice i would go for imperial because the chances of mistakes/confusion are less with imperial, there are a lot of eerrors in metric arising from too many/not eneough zeros and decimal points in the wrong place. also imperial are more “natural” units
There is no better place in the whole interweb for a collection of people so stupedously well-informed about absolutely everything.
Many thanks to all - I shall be explaining and proselytising for this wondrous word for the rest of the month.
Some people’s interactions with teenagers are clearly reduced to moaning at them rather than actually interacting with them.
These are often same sort of people who think that the world should be left to old men to run, despite, for one, that they rarely have the interests of the future at heart and, for two, that mental capacity and agility decreases with age.
Sometimes experience just makes people a grouchy windbag with a tenuous hold on the world as it now is.
314. it isn’t a freedom of speech issue. if the general populace are “bilingual” with some people only doing one or the other, shopkeepers should sell in both, with an eye to the past and the future.
Geopolitics: 10 mistakes made by the Left
——
–1) terrorism has always been and will always be with us, and though its tools may change, it will ontologically remain the same;
–2) because of 1), no victory in a war against terror is possible;
–3) because the enemy is not a state but trans-territorial, shadowy organizations, the notion of a “war” on terror is junk;
–4) terrorism cannot be an enemy … because it is a technique;
–5) because terrorism is a technique, a method, it is always and only a means to an end;
–6) one lad’s terrorist is another lad’s freedom fighter;
–7) the root cause of terrorism lies in conditions of poverty and imperialism;
–8) terrorism is not a matter for the military coze there are no battlefield lines or armies to confront;
–9) rules of law that apply to inter-states conflicts can apply to war on terror;
–10) good intelligence provides the key to defeating evil terror.
288. Grain? Not clear if you’re referring to the jewellers measure or the agricultural product (which is still traded in Chicago in bushels IIRC). Mind you, nothing wrong with a scruple, SFAIC.
As for stuff like water, simple 1 gall = 10lbs (unless you’re American, in which case ” a pint’s a pound the whole world round”.
As for litres, well, I know what it looks like in a measuring cylinder, but I doubt I could give a close estimate if it was slopping round in a tank.
The key factor for Imperial is that it is mostly based on body parts, or other natural objects (1 carob seed = 1 carat, 1 acre the area a horse can plough in a day, 1 foot is the average length of an adult males foot) and therefore very easy to make estimates and to reproduce (try reproducing a metre from basics, you’ll need a *very* accurate clock). Like Newton’s Laws however, it doesn’t work so well with the very big or the very small. But for most people that isn’t a problem.
It’s very odd when you come across measurements out of context though, I have a chemical catalogue intended for the US domestic market, and the products are offered in pounds and ounces. Weird.
304. It is it’s founding reason for existence, everything else is flim flam.
Some people dont seem to ‘get it’. The EU is unpopular, not because we dont like the Germans, or that they ‘bombed our chippy’, or because of a dislike of foreigners.
It is unpopular because it is a grabbing institution that actively defies the will of the people, that uses deception and corruption to achieve its aims.
The EU is akin to a young bull in a field of cows, it cant help itself, it continuously tries to f*ck everything and anything, its desire cannot be satisfied, it just f*cks and f*cks and f*cks.
317. “…is still largely imperial because of the US influence. given the choice i would go for imperial because the chances of mistakes/confusion are less with imperial,…”
you do know that US imperial is different to UK imperial on many measures, right?
that is another reason why UK imperial is dying off, there is too much scope for confusion with the increasingly influential US.
320 It is a freedom of speech thing - if I wish to call a certain mass of a product 1 pound, or if I wish to call it 0.454kg it doesn’t change the product. Making it illegal to call it one or the other clearly limits freedom of speech, to no good end.
320 cont. That’s not to say there aren’t other reasons not to ban one or the other though
@324:
It’s not often that Ed’s right, but there’s a rare example of it here. The fact that the US’s units are different from the UK’s means that the UK’s are, frankly, doomed.
321 - Bizarrely your list of things against ‘the left’ is actually a list of mistakes by ‘neo-cons’.
(although point 9 is too nebulous to really mean anything)
I recommend to anyone to read post 321 and imagine that it is about ‘neo-cons’ instead, the fit is perfect.
I may disagree with the left on many things but they’ve been right all along about the crazed concept of a ‘war on terror’.
288 There are similar correspondences in imperial. A 10cm cube contains a litre, and a litre of water weighs a kilo. A 6″ cube contains a gallon, and a gallon of water weights 10lb.
298 When calculating something (eg by calculator or spreadsheet), you should do a secondary mental arithmetic check to make sure you haven’t messed up your calculations, to make sure your answer is in the right ballpark. The ability to calculate with fractions can be useful here - although I admit I often use an iterative approach (ie rather than divide by 6 2/3 I’d divide by 6 and 7 and assume the correct answer was about 2/3 of the way between the two).
321 - Phillipe, those are mistakes made by the Left and the Right, according to the guy who wrote them.
I met Phillip Bobbit at the Standpoint Magazine event (he was debating Micharl Gove). He is very softly spoken for a Texan, and a truly charming gentleman.
Amusingly, the “Metric Martyrs” are supporting a Polish restaurateur who is being prosecuted for selling beer in litres…..
http://news.bbc.co.uk/1/hi/england/south_yorkshire/7546315.stm
330 - Well spotted Morus, the spin was rather obvious.
331 The BBC’s not quite right, beer may be sold in thirds of a pint and multiples of half a pint.
322. it is a nice argument for imperial that some of the measures were originally based on intuitive things, but you take it way too far.
a metre and a yard are pretty similar. don’t be fooled by the dry official definition, that is not how the metre was originally derived.
an acre happens to be convenient in the modern age because it is roughly the size of a football pitch. that is coincidence. the ploughing thing is of no help to anyone born since 1850.
I must admit, I totally fail to see what “imperial” vs metric measures have to do with “Europe”.
Metric measurements are the measurements of science. They are inately interconnected, thus 1 joule is the amount of energy required to raise the temperature of 1g of water by 1 centigrade.
Clinging to imperial measurements (particularly farenheit, calories, miles, and worst of all pounds, inches, etc.) means every school child with any interest in science has to learn measurements twice over.
This has nothing to do with Europe. This is about modernity.
330, much easier to blame the left though isn’t it?
Admitting that the right (in the form of GWB) have been useless in combatting terrorism would tax the world views of too many people…
@335:
“This is about modernity.”
Now there’s a dreadful Blairite buzzword I haven’t heard since Cool Britannia.
335. fact is that modernity is leading us ever nearer to other countries in europe on a lot of issues, and the old mistrust of europe/johnny foreigner fades as a result.
this isn’t welcomed by the sort of people for whom the idea of joining the euro was a simple question of “save our british pound”, but true nonetheless.
334.
Too far? How so when those are the actual derivations?
BTW. It was reported last week that the acre is about to become illegal. It’s hectares only from now on.
It’s the EU, you know.
335, Yes, but it was incontrovertibly established on pb.com that most scientists are part of a left-wing conspiracy (cf previous discussions on global warming), so their units of measurement are intrinsically suspect.
@338:
Stating something as FACT doesn’t make it true.
What the buggering flip does ‘modernity’ even me? I assume it’s some sort of leftie code for French-style degenerate socialism?
I see no problem with being bilingual in terms of measurement: I’m happy to claim that I understand both, and can mix & match as required. Why should we use the language of science when buying food to eat?
The connection with Europe is that is likes to over-regulate everything - not only the units you can sell things in, but also the varieties of fruits & veg you can sell etc, which has no connection with necessary consumer protection. The EU now seems to say that the UK isn’t required to convert to metric, which is a step in the right direction.
Latest Rasmussen tracker :
McCain 46% … Obama 48%
http://www.rasmussenreports.com/public_content/politics/election_20082/2008_presidential_election/daily_presidential_tracking_poll
“modernity is leading us ever nearer to other countries in europe on a lot of issues”
*cough*
I’m in favour of SI/metric units, not a European superstate.
My point is that a sensible, long-term strategy should be to head towards metric only. Obviously, if you want to call something a pint, that’s up to you. But in (state) schools we should teach metric.
And - while I hate compulsion - it is not a bad idea to require car makers to put km/h on speedometers. Maybe we should look to - on all new road signs - put kms as well as miles. Etc. etc. etc.
A long process with a little bit of government push.
It’s really not complicated.
But more importantly, waste two minutes of your day on this. It’ll make you smile:
The Barack Roll
344. as with other western countries, britain has to make its mind up on a system of units. it makes sense for everyone to have a good one, that everyone else uses. that is what is happening.
that is the principle of working together with international partners. there are so many other areas where it makes sense to agree, that there is a union designed to encourage and facilitate those agreements, the EU. similarly, the “special relationship” with the US.
“superstate” seems to be a word used only in arguments of last resort. i note that such loaded language is never used to highlight the fact that we always do whatever the US president requires of us.
345 Or you could argue that it’s none of the government’s business to determine what measurements people should use.
Maybe we should look to - on all new road signs - put kms as well as miles.
No, no, no! What on earth would be the point of that?? It would just cause confusion, clutter and expense for absolutely no material gain. It would be like renaming all the A-roads to G-roads, and the B-roads to H-roads. Utterly, utterly imbecilic.
345. it is extremely complicated, because of extremely vocal opposition from a small number of small minded, grumpy, old g*ts who will complain about every single thing that is done in that direction. it is the encroachment of an EU superstate. we can’t even have straight bananas any more. those bureaucrats in brussels. save our british pound. they bombed our chippy.
334. Sometime around 1980 I helped a great-uncle of mine measure a piece of land with an actual ‘chain’ (22 yards long made up of 100 links).
The original definition of a metre is based on there being 10000 km from the equator to the North pole.
The original definition of a nautical mile was 1 minute of arc i.e. 1/5400 of the distance from equator to North pole. So there is actually a direct relationship between the nautical mile and the metre.
348; except that in schools and on road signs, the government does make a decision.
And it’s one that retards the understanding of science.
If we really want to be modern we should drive on the right - the deaths from accidents during the handover will be martyrs to the cause of modernity..
I discovered something interesting on the train today chatting to a bloke who sells the Big Issue (Talked to him before about a load of b*llocks when i was shit faced one afternoon about 2 years ago!).
This bloke told me that he has to buy the big issue from his own resources and then they resell them on. I did not know this! I thought they were either given them and split the money or bought on a type of sale and return!
338. Again, you are implying complete mistruths about the reasons for euroscepticism. When we all did one of those political ideology tests I came out as the most internationalist on here. I think Europe is fantastic, and visit it whenever I can. Whenever I can get the money together I like backpacking to random parts of the world, just to experience foreign cultures. I have done a great deal of voluntary work helping kids in both Asia and Africa. I find the idea that we should care less about foreigners than about British people abhorrent, as if some people are worth less than others based on the limits of the nation state. I have detested the Bush administrations horrendous unilateralism. For the last few threads I have been arguing that we need action against Russia as we cannot abandon a whole nation’s liberty in some part of a grand compromise.
But despite this, I am still eurosceptic and quite strongly so. Doesn’t that challenge your views?
353: in what way does driving on the left have anything to do with using a system of measurements that is (a) logical, and (b) used by the scientific community the world over?
347. The EU isn’t a super-state, it’s not even a state, so how the hell do they get the nerve to tell everyone what they must do.
It is, though, giving a very good impression of a strait-jacket.
@354:
No, The Big Issue was founded by a ultra-Thatcherite. Business, not charity.
Cullions definitely means nads (as well as other things). Chaucher uses it in the Pardoner’s Tale, I think - though he spells it “coillons” or somesuch (he was a terrible speller).
351. it is no coincidence that a “metre” is one stride, and roughly the same length as a yard.
#335 Robert - you need to check the specific heat capacity of water! It takes around 4.186J of heat to raise 1g of water through 1C.
iirc it is around 1 calorie (non SI unit) of heat required to raise 1g of water through 1C.
(Again iirc the SHC of water varies with temperature, and you need to exclude the possibility of a phase change.)
355. everyone has their own reasons for holding their views.
my contention was that the more international people are in outlook, the more they tend to favour cooperation between nations, which is what the EU is intended to be.
349 - Ireland had an interesting time in the late 80s when you might see a sign saying “Cork 57″. You drove a bit closer to Cork and the next sign would say “Cork 74″. There was nothing to tell you that the first sign was in miles and the second in km.
I’m pretty bilingual for measurements, but I notice that even my parents, in their 80s, now tend to use Celsius (or Centigrade as they say). I prefer Fahrenheit for weather, as it is a bit like a % scale - 0′F is bloody cold, and 100′F is bloody hot.
356 - The metric system is used by the scientific community beacuse it is well-suited for scientific purposes. The Imperial system is just as good, if not better, for many other purposes. What is wrong with using two different systems?
364: really. Which purposes?
359 - Coillons would have been the spelling back then as it was a archaic French word. English initially removed one ‘l to get coilons and then respelt it with a double ‘l’ and a ‘u’.
352 - How on earth does putting signs in miles retard the understanding of science. In my experience anyone with a sufficient capacity to understand science and maths would have no trouble using as many systems of measurement as they need to.
@361:
It takes one calorie to heat 1g of water at standard presure (1.01×10^5 Pascals) from the triple point to 1 deg C above the triple point.
@365:
Arguing about?
364. it is confusing, irritating, encourages everyone to have their own incompatible system (cf. the USA, which incidentally is more faithful to the original imperial system), and requires everyone to learn twice as much just to stand still.
if we were choosing a system from scratch from all the ones ever invented, metric would win every single time. imperial would be lower down the list. a mixture would be right at the bottom.
O/T again- but this is critically serious.
Despite Russian denials, the BBC has confirmed that Russian troops are now over 40 miles inside Georgia proper- advancing from Abhazia and have occupied several large cities. Russia appears to be embarcking on the complete subjugation and occupation of all Georgian territory and intends to overthrow the democratic regime of Mikheil Saakashvili. All calls for a ceasefire have been ignored.
Georgia is not a member of NATO, but it is an American ally.
366- Didn’t you hear about the Mars satellite that crashed into the Red Planet because the guy operating the controls didn’t bother to convert units before redirecting its course?
368:
And Ed, 369, I rarely agree with you, but “if we were choosing a system from scratch from all the ones ever invented, metric would win every single time. imperial would be lower down the list. a mixture would be right at the bottom.” is spot on.
Now I don’t know much about drugs, but I am given to understand that cannabis is sold in eights (of an ounce), but cocaine in grams.
And haircuts - “I’ll have a number 4″ - is in eights of an inch. Could you go into a barbershop and ask for a 6mm cut?
359. I don’t care if it cullions, coillons, cajones, balls or whatever term you want to use - I hate all of them.
@374:
Even your own?
For once I don’t see the point in this euro-debate. Even the europhiles themselves admit that they are nasty, smelly, arrogant, anti-democratic liars, they just think that their repulsive europhile lies and deceit are justified in the name of some global good, or whatever. Others differ.
So why don’t we just agree on one thing: Europhiles: UGH - then split the difference and move on.
367 - but a Calorie (with a capital “C”)as used when talking about what we eat is actually a kilocalorie.
seanT - what Euro debate? We’re talking about SI units…
262. But equally as people become more internationalist in outlook they will become more aware of the problems of a charade of democracy, which the EU actually is.
369 - Perhaps, but the point is we are not starting from scratch. There is absoultely nothing wrong with the status quo, so why change it?
370. Have you a link?
PS. Thank God for David Cameron being one of the few to have a strong voice in all this.
381 - “Thank God for David Cameron”
What has Cameron said on this that warrant praise to the Lord?
381. What has David had to say?
383, that “russians are bad m’okay”
“The metric system is the tool of the devil”
383 - It’s Saint David to you and he’s against it. The guns have fallen silent and it is all flowers and reconciliation.
http://news.bbc.co.uk/1/hi/uk_politics/7553508.stm
384 - I think there are no good guys in this conflict. I await a statement by my own party. I’m sure it will be naive and following public opinion, rather than well-informed.
Its good that America doesnt want to fight in Gerogia, it means we are spared from being ordered by America to send our own forces there.
372
Interestingly in my business (oil exploration) we use a mixture of measures both imperial and API. There is a good reason for this and it is to do with human perception and the way we deal with units and fractions.
People naturally tend to think in whole numbers. Therefore when thos numbers are supposed to reflect some outside reality - a volume or a pressure for example - they will always choose to use those measures which best provide reasonable whole number representations - and not too many of them. Hence in oil drilling a cubic metre is too large a number and a litre too small to use when dealing with possible influx or loss volumes in a well. The barrel (about 1/6th of a cube) is a far better unit to use.
Since these things have a direct impact on the safety of the people involved (leading to blow outs etc if we get it wrong) then any attempt to impose a uniform metric system from without was abandoned long ago. The same applies to pressures although not generally to depth where we tend to use metres since there is less of a safety factor involved and the unit is one which fits fairly well with human scaling.
This is not just limited to those countries who have always used imperial or API units. It is also commonly the case in paces like Norway, Denmark and Holland as well as in the rest of the world.
389. Bloody typical. Russia acts as a huge bully, perpetuates a crisis in an unstable part of another country, and uses it as an excuse to reclaim an old imperial colony, and some people’s immediate instinct is to have a knock at the US.
That first sentance should have saaid Imperial, API and metric.
391. Yes its all McCain’s fault
389- Noboby’s going to do anything in Georgia. The Russians will do their business, impose their terms, and leave after the Georgian government inevitably accepts those terms.
383. whatever it was, the russians think he is on their side, and the georgians are delighted by his support
391- I wasnt knocking America, I was knocking our pathetic slavish attitue to America.
388 - If you are desperate to know:
Commenting on the developing conflict in South Ossetia involving Georgian and Russian forces, Liberal Democrat Shadow Foreign Secretary, Edward Davey said:
“We need a ceasefire and urgent negotiations to stop the military action escalating.
“There is now real danger of an all-out conflict between Russian and Georgian troops.
“There is also the risk of Abkhazia raising the stakes by cutting vital hydro-electricity supplies to Georgia.
“The UN must put pressure on Russia to pull back from the brink. If the Russians can show restraint, they will surely be well placed to offer negotiations.”
…of course, Cameron, Davey et al are all just farting against a hurricane. Fair play to them - nothing more they can do.
394- I know, even if there was no war in Iraq/Afg. there is no chance of a direct USA-Russia war!
Shame though, it would be fun listening to all the pro american brits on this forum trying to justify that we are not Americas poodle while the American reserves (formerly called the British Army) die on the battlefields of Gerogia.
Just to make it clear to you, I am no attacking America!
Now is Clegg’s chance. He must jump on a plane, fly to Georgia, and single-handedly halt the Russian advance.
He must then persuade the Russians to renounce violence, aggression etc.
Now is the Liberal Democrats hour. Now is their chance to shine.
393- You do, perhaps inadvertently, make a great point there. Very soon Obama will be President, Pelosi will continue to be in charge in the House, and Reid will continue to be Senate Majority Leader. McCain will have faded into obscurity, Bush will be back at the ranch, and of course Newt Gingrich and Tom Delay are figures of the past. For those who have made standard fare of associating America with conservatism and the evils of the world in general, what will they do? Whom will they demonize when they wish to lay the blame for some new unfortunate development at the feet of America, and more particularly American conservatives? It isn’t apparent what they will do, but they will have some happy moments for quiet reflection and comtemplation in the wake of the coming elections.
397- Thank god DC wasnt atending a genocide conference outside the UK!
Reporter: “Why are you here when you should be in Georgia fighting the Russians with your cycle helmet”
394. I genuinely hope that Russia does leave Georgia. I have a worrying feeling they won’t.
399 - He’s on holiday I think, so can it wait until next week?
Russian pincer movement on Gori from South Ossetia and Abjhazia.
402- Well, I don’t have great hopes for the Russians leaving South Ossetia, but then again, Georgia will probably have to effectively renounce any claim to the region as part of a settlement. I sympathise with your view of the situation, but the Georgians also were foolish to effectively put their finger in the light socket to see what would happen. Now they’ve seen.
400 - Blame the French. Easy - next question.
Gordon should call a COBRA meeting - this is big chance to turn round the polls. Command his troops - bring fairness to the hardworking families of Horsesettee-er…
401 - I am sure they will. One thing you cannot accuse Putumedvedev of is being stupid. As opposed to George Bush…
407- And then maybe he could clear up whats happening with Stamp duty, or just let the UK housing market collapse further.
405. I agree that the Georgian government was stupid, but we need to make sure we don’t make the easy mistake of conflating the government and the people. It is the whole country that will suffer if Moscow overthrows the democratic system, and they do not deserve that.
@400:
Absolutely. As Nick Cohen recently put it, Bush is the greatest friend that liberals have ever had.
407. Oh yes; let the Great Leader lead.
O/T I remember a year ago that Cameron was heavily criticised for being in Rwanda while his constituents got damp back home. Anybody know whether Jonah Brown has been to the aid of his constituents in Fife who are the victims of raging floodwaters up there? Or was he instead making an t*t of himself at the Edinburgh Book Festival, perchance?
406- The poor French! But one other idea is to simply take the approach that Labour has taken since coming to power, judging from Commons debates since 1997: either blame the problem on the previous government or claim that at least things are better than they were then.
Good news for Clegg - LD voice members rate him higher than Susan Kramer
http://www.libdemvoice.org/ldv-members-survey-august-2008-5-how-do-you-rate-the-performances-of-the-current-shadow-cabinet-3106.html
maybe the president was trying to become the second famous georgian in history
BBC. Gori occupied by Russian forces, say AP.
Well, we can’t fight a war with the Russians as they have nukes. So is there any way Europe can reduce its dependency on their gas in the short-term. My guess is no and the Russians know it. Not until the Nabucco pipeline is finished and there are reports that the Russians tried to bomb it.
416 - Yes but not a patch on Mr Dzhugashvili
416 - Katie Melua is not that famous…
416- It looks like he’s also headed for infamy, indeed.
418. A drastic and immediate investment in renewable and nuclear energy would be a good start. Ukraine will be next - no doubt there will be another crisis engineered over Crimea.
416. The last famous Georgian ?
400. That’s simple. What all sensible people would do in the circumstances:
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Llgunu-FlX4&feature=related
418 - I now have Verdi swimming around in my head.
418- One of the most obvious ways for Europe to reduce its dependency on Russian energy is to increase nuclear energy development. I’m not sure where things are at in the UK in that regard, but likely similar to the U.S. where its at a standstill. But neither country seems as intent on self-destruction as the Germans, who appear determined to dismantle their domestic nuclear energy resources while willfully becoming ever more dependent on Russian gas.
414 - You’re right in the sense that it helps to have a bogeyman to attack. All administrations get by for a while attacking the old bogeyman - happened here with the Tories for many years after 1979 and Labour after 1997. But that gets tired after a while and it ceases to work as a ploy.
But I’m not sure what your overall point is. Just because that’s the way of the world doesn’t necessarily mean the bogeyman isn’t a bogeyman or that you should not want to vanquish him.
Even if Obama wins in November, there will come a stage when the Republicans come back into vogue. Even if Cameron wins here in 2009/10, he and his party will eventually flag and lose. But so what?
420 - OK, I’m being thick. The other famous Georgian must be:
http://tinyurl.com/39gc9v
Nice to see Gordon knows how to deal with a crisis!
http://www.dailymail.co.uk/news/article-1043371/Gordon-Browns-latest-book-project-British-through.html
Maybe he should wait until he has been booted out of office to complete his book on Britishness! I think this sums up all you need to know about how out of his depth this man is! Still he is on our side! Does he actually know what for though!
Nevermind an anologue politician in a digital age this F*CKER uses smoke signals!!!!
416 Not much of a list, those famous Georgians:
http://www.caucasushome.com/photoalbum/thumbnails.php?album=35
Belgium, rejoice!
429. From henceforth he shall be refered to as PM Gordon Betamax
Back on topic, there’s more detail on the News of the World YouGov poll:
http://ukpollingreport.co.uk/blog/archives/1282
Looks like not terribly good news for one D. Miliband. Instead, Labour should be looking for ‘None of the above’ as their next leader.
Now they just need to find him or her.
418
That is the problem. Europe was indeed trying to reduce dependency on the Russians for gas and oil. Hence the pipeline through Georgia. Hence the reason the Russians are now intent on controlling that pipeline.
431 - Under no circumstances should this PM ever go to Khartoum, the headlines would write themselves wouldnt they!
433 - We really should start looking into that oil thats around the Falklands.
Back home again, with one of Obama’s books in my luggage - I feel I ought to like him or at least understand him more, and not be put off by the sheer intensity of some of his fans. It looks engaging and more importantly seems to have been written by him or at least with substantial personal input.
Glancing over the recent threads, I’m wary of the general tendency to pick a side between Russia and Georgia. Isn’t it perfectly possible to feel that the Georgian President is a reckless extremist with a dubious electoral mandate AND that Russia is exploiting his provocation so that they can intimidate surrounding former Soviet countries? I don’t see any admirable figures here whom we should be rushing to support.
Urging Russia to stop fighting now they’ve won seems a reasonable line - they could get the moral high ground by inviting the UN to conduct a referendum in South Ossetia on whether they want to be Russian or Georgian (in the same wauy that Denmark held a referendum in Slesvig-Holstein after the Allies offered them the whole territory in 1918) and offer a long-term peace agreement to Georgia if it accepts the result. I doubt if they will, unfortunately - Putin will be enjoying the muscle-flexing too much.
If anyone is curious, I only got the bronze in Diplomacy at the convention this year (a tag-team of two American players turned up and won every game), but won the tournament in the Cuba board game, which is about trading in pre-revolutionary Havana, a prominent feature of which is bribing corrupt politicians. Hmm!
427- It’s more a matter of curiosity than anything else. It has been very easy for certain folks to blame everything rotten about the world on America, and they tend to be supporters of the left. But what to do when one of their greatest heroes, Barack Obama, is leading the nation onto which they’ve become accustomed to pouring so much of their hatred? Will they be flummoxed and at a loss for how to explain the workings of the world? Will they turn on a dime as the Communists did in 1939, and then again in 1941 (first anti-Nazi, then pro-Nazi, then again anti-Nazi)? If they become pro-American, who will the next villain be? It will be interesting to watch.
432 “Labour should be looking for ‘None of the above’ as their next leader.”
I used to know someone called “Non”. She was Welsh. Maybe a clue there as to where to look?
@430:
Yeah, but a certain Iosef Vissarionovich Djugashvili counts as several thousand Belgians, I would have thought.
Brown is completly off his head! He has no idea!
I just hope Blairs instructions remained on the Trident subs! Knowing Gordon, the turkey: he will have screwed that up as well and ordered the Trident missiles to target us!
436 - very sensible comments Nick on Russia/Georgia.
New thread - Can Gord get to be like this again?
439 - what,more famous than Jimmy Carter?
439 Stalin “bigger than Tintin” shocker!
297 Judging by respective rates of electoral turnout, the answer to your question is “Yes.”
435 They are. Have to see what Buenoes Aires does.
436. Hello Nick! It’s not the winning…….! I thought Socialists did not like competivive games anyway! Certainly Gordon doesn’t like competion!!!
Nice one on the bronze! I did look on your Weki page and went onto the board games from there! I saw last years 2007 champion(You)! Some of those games have a fair booty to be won unless it is monopoly money! I was itching to know whether you had won a second one! Nevermind better luck next year!
436 - Nick, are you sure you are not put off by what you are *told* is the intensity of his fans? On here, for example, there are probably thre or four times as many promoting McCain than there are Obama. I know, because there are only a few of us who ever try to counter misinformation, and much of it is pretty scandalous in its untruthfulness!
246 “‘Europe makes my dongle work’”
lol!
437 - You will probably find that 90% of these people have been critics of the policies of Bush and, as long as they are not followed, will be fine.
It is also bizarre to suggest that these people were against Iraq because of a person they didn’t know. Yo may as well say that people hated the US for Iraq because McCain was for it.