Politics Thread 5

[Preezy]

He at least appears to have personality software installed, unlike the Maybot.

[Moggy]

He at least appears to have personality software installed, unlike the Maybot.

She has personality. It's just that her personality software is that of an evil old casual racist witch.

[Cuttooth]

He did have some bugs early on.

[KK]

David Dimbleby’s last Question Time tonight at 10:45pm. He’s regenerating into a woman next year.

[Lex-Man]

Lucky man, I hope to regenerate into a woman one day.

[more heat than light]

twitter.com/SamCoatesTimes/status/1073311593776205824

[KK]

November 2018

Metro: 1,451,399 (down 1% year-on-year)
The Sun: 1,403,779 (down 6%)
Daily Mail: 1,222,611 (down 12%)
The Sun On Sunday: 1,187,848 (down 7%)
Mail on Sunday: 1,028,736 (down 13%)
London Evening Standard: 856,439 (down 5%)
The Sunday Times: 727,079 (down 3%)
Daily Mirror: 519,224 (down 12%)
Sunday Mirror: 434,436 (down 14%)
The Times: 415,577 (down 6%)
The Daily Telegraph: 359,110 (down 22%)
Daily Star: 340,816 (down 15%)
Daily Express: 322,798 (down 12%)
The Sunday Telegraph: 283,751 (down 17%)
Sunday Express: 280,404 (down 11%)
i: 238,771 (down 8%)
Daily Star Sunday: 205,702 (down 14%)
Financial Times: 177,196 (down 5%)
Sunday People: 168,690 (down 15%)
The Observer: 165,868 (down 6%)
The Guardian: 136,834 (down 7%)

Mail Online: 11,788,742 daily users (down 16% year-on-year)
Metro: 1,825,680 (down 11%)
The Sun: 4,738,101 (down 12%)

A number of these print editions are going to go under within the next decade for sure.

[Ecno]

I wish Ed was back. Can we have a redo of that election? Cameron wants to come back to UK politics we could have that again

[Garth]

Student loan shake-up puts £12bn hole in public finances
National deficit increases after ONS says student loans count as government spending

Philip Hammond is facing a £12bn hole in the public finances this year after changes to the way student loans are treated on the government’s books, reflecting that many will never be repaid.

In a stroke of the pen from the Office for National Statistics, student loans will now be treated as part financial asset in the national accounts, because some will be repaid, while part will be classified as government expenditure, as some loans will never be paid back in full.

It said it would result in the budget deficit – the annual gap between government income and expenditure – increasing by about 0.6 percentage points of GDP a year, which equates to about £12bn in the current financial year.

The changes are bad news for the chancellor because they wipe out all of the windfall from a better performance in the public finances this year handed to him by the Office for Budget Responsibility.

It could also have significant implications for the review of university funding in England led by Philip Augar, which is due to report early in the new year and is considering whether to cut tuition fees from £9,250 per year.

https://www.theguardian.com/uk-news/201 ... s-accounts

[Moggy]

I wish Ed was back. Can we have a redo of that election? Cameron wants to come back to UK politics we could have that again

I’d take Gordon Brown over this shower of gooseberry fool.

[<]:^D]

i was talking with my family about this - by default Gordon Brown is the best PM of the last 20 years
Tony Blair has Iraq hanging over him
David Cameron austerity and the referendum decision
May has austerity, Brexit means Brexit and Windrush

equally depressing and ridiculous

[Moggy]

i was talking with my family about this - by default Gordon Brown is the best PM of the last 20 years
Tony Blair has Iraq hanging over him
David Cameron austerity and the referendum decision
May has austerity, Brexit means Brexit and Windrush

equally depressing and ridiculous

Good old Gordon, he wasn't a great Prime Minister but he wins by default thanks to the others being such appalling human beings.

[Lex-Man]

i was talking with my family about this - by default Gordon Brown is the best PM of the last 20 years
Tony Blair has Iraq hanging over him
David Cameron austerity and the referendum decision
May has austerity, Brexit means Brexit and Windrush

equally depressing and ridiculous

Good old Gordon, he wasn't a great Prime Minister but he wins by default thanks to the others being such appalling human beings.

Wouldn't he be complict in all the Blair stuff. I'm guessing he wasn't PM then but he still supported it.

[Moggy]

i was talking with my family about this - by default Gordon Brown is the best PM of the last 20 years
Tony Blair has Iraq hanging over him
David Cameron austerity and the referendum decision
May has austerity, Brexit means Brexit and Windrush

equally depressing and ridiculous

Good old Gordon, he wasn't a great Prime Minister but he wins by default thanks to the others being such appalling human beings.

Wouldn't he be complict in all the Blair stuff. I'm guessing he wasn't PM then but he still supported it.

Probably but he wasn't the man in charge who made the actual decision.

[Lotus]

MPs want halt to smart motorway rollout over safety concerns

The rollout of smart motorways, where the hard shoulder has been permanently converted into a fourth lane, should be stopped, a group of MPs says.

The all-party group backed campaigners who say having no hard shoulder puts motorists and recovery workers at risk.

England has more than 100 miles (161km) of All Lane Running (ALR) smart motorways, with 225 miles more planned.

MP Tracey Crouch said the rollout should be paused, but Highways England said ALR smart motorways were safe.

Smart motorways work by using the hard shoulder as a fourth lane, with variable speed limits to control the flow of traffic.

https://www.bbc.co.uk/news/uk-46553654

Bit late now. It was clear long ago that they're absolute gooseberry fool: unsafe, the variable limits are a joke, the warning signs are a joke, and they're just an all around bad idea. Hopefully they see sense and scrap them altogether.

[Moggy]

Four lane motorways are a good idea. Having no hard shoulder is a bad idea.

[Vermilion]

It took 2 1/2 years to convert a 15 mile stretch of the M3 to ALR, when you consider the amount of works and the timescale, they might as well have just included a hard shoulder.

[Benzin]

The best parts are when the road is congested but they don't let you use the hard shoulder for.... Reasons? Defeating the whole point of the thing in the first place.

[Dual]

After recently completing a motorway awareness course I'm completely reeducated on smart motorways and think they are excellent and safe.

[DML]

i was talking with my family about this - by default Gordon Brown is the best PM of the last 20 years
Tony Blair has Iraq hanging over him
David Cameron austerity and the referendum decision
May has austerity, Brexit means Brexit and Windrush

equally depressing and ridiculous

Good old Gordon, he wasn't a great Prime Minister but he wins by default thanks to the others being such appalling human beings.

Wouldn't he be complict in all the Blair stuff. I'm guessing he wasn't PM then but he still supported it.

I mean it always felt he wanted Blair to die, so Im not sure how supportive Brown would have been.