tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-296185132024-03-13T12:47:28.215+00:00snowflake5Location: UKsnowflake5http://www.blogger.com/profile/14700425293614182769noreply@blogger.comBlogger774125tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-29618513.post-60679431895761129332014-04-22T23:33:00.000+01:002014-04-22T23:54:54.354+01:00The Scottish Referendum
The Irish Republic declared independence from the UK in 1919, and the Anglo-Irish Treaty making them the Irish Free State was signed in 1921 and became effective in December 1922.
That was 93 years ago, and it's taken till now for the Irish President to pay a state visit to Britain.
On the day of the visit, the Irish economist David McWilliams wrote a sweet article entitled Are the Irish the snowflake5http://www.blogger.com/profile/14700425293614182769noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-29618513.post-67751401560684103682014-04-22T21:59:00.001+01:002014-04-22T21:59:07.419+01:00snowflake5http://www.blogger.com/profile/14700425293614182769noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-29618513.post-57775248234123027632013-12-23T17:55:00.001+00:002013-12-23T17:58:54.014+00:00Watch The Savers...Almost un-noticed came the announcement from the Bank of England that long-term savings had dropped by £23 billion in the year to October 2013 - a drop of 4.7%, the last time there was a yearly percentage drop of that magnitude Ted Heath was in Downing Street. In absolute terms, we've never seen such a big drop.
That reversed the trend from October 2007 to October 2012, when savings had snowflake5http://www.blogger.com/profile/14700425293614182769noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-29618513.post-60461867272463998172013-12-23T16:59:00.001+00:002013-12-23T16:59:18.152+00:00snowflake5http://www.blogger.com/profile/14700425293614182769noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-29618513.post-60854310159569321792013-09-05T11:36:00.000+01:002013-09-05T11:38:53.211+01:00Regarding the Syria War Vote
I'm astonished that David Cameron hasn't resigned.
Consider what happened.
He dramatically and portentiously recalled Parliament at great expense for the vote on Thursday 29th August - even though he could have waited just a few days till Monday when Parliament was due to reconvene anyway. But a debate on Monday wouldn't have had the Drama that recalling Parliament early would have had.
He snowflake5http://www.blogger.com/profile/14700425293614182769noreply@blogger.com1tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-29618513.post-54762134529026786962013-09-05T11:20:00.003+01:002013-09-05T11:20:21.929+01:00snowflake5http://www.blogger.com/profile/14700425293614182769noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-29618513.post-82830535846071130542013-08-25T05:57:00.000+01:002013-08-25T06:43:15.554+01:00In Politics Demographics Are Destiny
The image above comes from the ONS Census Animation of the last 100 years. (Click to enlarge the image and see detail).
See that huge bulge from age 40 to 50? That's my generation. We were teenagers in the 1980's (which shaped our politics). We started voting in the 1990's, and by 1997, as late twenty-somethings and early thirty-somethings, we were a big enough cohort to put Labour into powersnowflake5http://www.blogger.com/profile/14700425293614182769noreply@blogger.com1tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-29618513.post-5470135709343566622013-08-25T04:27:00.003+01:002013-08-25T04:27:37.382+01:00snowflake5http://www.blogger.com/profile/14700425293614182769noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-29618513.post-34766313182071659722013-04-09T19:11:00.000+01:002013-04-09T19:17:57.551+01:00Ding Dong - A Warning For British Politicians
One of the most disturbing things about watching dictators is the way they force the people they've hurt to show "respect" to them. Who can forget the terrified boy standing stock still with fear as Saddam Hussein patted his head or the cold hungry people of North Korea praising their "dear leader"? It's an exercise of absolute power over the absolutely powerless.
In the last day, our snowflake5http://www.blogger.com/profile/14700425293614182769noreply@blogger.com1tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-29618513.post-28329257904033300592013-04-09T18:22:00.001+01:002013-04-09T18:22:38.896+01:00snowflake5http://www.blogger.com/profile/14700425293614182769noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-29618513.post-64506632594401489352012-11-01T03:58:00.000+00:002012-11-01T04:13:21.073+00:00The EU Budget VoteSo - Labour actually pulled it off. A bold decision to back the Tory MP Mark Reckless' amendment calling for a cut in the EU budget actually resulted in the first defeat in the Commons for Cameron and Co. And on an issue where he is vulnerable.
It's left lots of Tories feeling puzzled. Why did Labour vote the way they did? The first reason is rather obvious - with our people suffering badly fromsnowflake5http://www.blogger.com/profile/14700425293614182769noreply@blogger.com2tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-29618513.post-46902206296678707512012-11-01T03:06:00.001+00:002012-11-01T03:06:55.883+00:00snowflake5http://www.blogger.com/profile/14700425293614182769noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-29618513.post-33731654956091300952012-07-31T05:59:00.001+01:002012-07-31T06:19:50.957+01:00The Olympic Opening Ceremony vs The Jubilee - which tribe do you belong to?It's well known that Britain is divided into two separate tribes who find each other incomprehensible. You have the Tory tribe which is feudalistic and believes that one should accrue status based on birth, and you have the Labour tribe which believes one should advance on merit.
We've seen both tribes strutting their stuff this year.
The Tory tribe got to go first with the Jubilee snowflake5http://www.blogger.com/profile/14700425293614182769noreply@blogger.com6tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-29618513.post-82053341455080147322012-07-31T04:53:00.001+01:002012-07-31T04:53:37.894+01:00snowflake5http://www.blogger.com/profile/14700425293614182769noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-29618513.post-13547771254843928092012-06-27T23:05:00.000+01:002012-06-28T01:50:53.541+01:00The Return of Tony BlairI've been meaning to write about Blair ever since his interesting interview by Andrew Marr on Sunday where he said, “I have always said I am a public service person first. I would have been happy to carry on as prime minister. I would have been happy taking the job as president of the EU.”
It's very rare that you get blunt open statements like that from politicians. Note I wrote "politician", snowflake5http://www.blogger.com/profile/14700425293614182769noreply@blogger.com6tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-29618513.post-62210423709068505992012-06-27T21:37:00.002+01:002012-06-27T21:37:29.153+01:00snowflake5http://www.blogger.com/profile/14700425293614182769noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-29618513.post-44273227547605833362012-05-05T03:46:00.000+01:002012-05-05T04:05:44.667+01:00Local Elections!It was nice to win 800+ seats, and not just hold off the SNP in Scotland, but win a string of wards in the south, taking Southampton, Norwich, Great Yarmouth, Exeter and many others. Labour wins general elections when Southern Labour finds it's groove and delivers victory, so this is an important milestone on the way to the next general election.
If you doubt it, click the following link to see snowflake5http://www.blogger.com/profile/14700425293614182769noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-29618513.post-82765440794037761882012-05-05T02:39:00.001+01:002012-05-05T02:39:32.549+01:00snowflake5http://www.blogger.com/profile/14700425293614182769noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-29618513.post-57169972331245683732012-04-03T01:25:00.009+01:002012-04-03T03:17:03.383+01:00Coalition government approval rating down to -43... according to YouGov. Blair didn't reach that negative rating till late 2006, nine and a half years after he got elected, and well after he agreed to step down.Obviously the last week and a bit have been packed with all sorts of excitement, and commentators are divided as to which event had the most impact - was it the granny tax at the same time as the top rate of tax being cut? Or was it snowflake5http://www.blogger.com/profile/14700425293614182769noreply@blogger.com3tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-29618513.post-33469610028899383052012-04-03T01:25:00.001+01:002012-04-03T01:25:15.119+01:00snowflake5http://www.blogger.com/profile/14700425293614182769noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-29618513.post-76009148259461756632011-12-27T14:35:00.007+00:002011-12-27T16:06:39.334+00:00Labour made some strategic wins in 2011In the political sections of the press it's wall-to-wall articles and editorials about how Ed Miliband needs to be toppled from the Labour leadership. Newsnight even headlined a "Should Ed go" feature on the night before the Feltham and Heston by-election. Luckily the voters ignored them and returned a Labour MP with a bigger majority and a healthy share of the vote.Why all the wall-to-wall snowflake5http://www.blogger.com/profile/14700425293614182769noreply@blogger.com3tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-29618513.post-11246063826710002562011-12-27T14:35:00.001+00:002011-12-27T14:35:30.989+00:00snowflake5http://www.blogger.com/profile/14700425293614182769noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-29618513.post-37611847867373138712011-12-11T16:16:00.006+00:002011-12-11T16:59:23.966+00:00The Americans have moved on already - for them, the challenge to their vision is BerlinThe British papers are understandably obsessed with Cameron's EU veto, with the right-wing press thrilled, the LibDem press (BBC, Guardian and Indie) appalled and the financial press (FT and Economist) deeply concerned. (Labour's sole media representative, the Mirror, has ignored the EU crisis entirely and focused on X-Factor and Tories-in-a-Nazi-themed-stag-party-scandal!).The Americans however snowflake5http://www.blogger.com/profile/14700425293614182769noreply@blogger.com4tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-29618513.post-11863846674354861602011-12-11T16:16:00.001+00:002011-12-11T16:16:20.988+00:00snowflake5http://www.blogger.com/profile/14700425293614182769noreply@blogger.com1tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-29618513.post-17505958812781964312011-11-01T02:02:00.009+00:002011-11-01T03:35:28.022+00:00End game for Greece: Papandreou calls a referendumThere is shock across the eurozone because George Papandreou has decided to call a referendum over the bailout that was cobbled together a few days ago.Papandreou is the socialist prime minister elected in Oct 2009 to sort out the mess created by the previous uber corrupt Conservative government who not only cooked the books but spent money they didn't have employing Goldman Sachs, who promptly snowflake5http://www.blogger.com/profile/14700425293614182769noreply@blogger.com3