JNLister

36 minutes ago, Monkee said:

Good point. (Edit - that was to @Your Fight Site’s comment)

I have another one too (overactive brain tonight!) - when a new PM comes in, I know they get to appoint their cabinet. Do they also get a new back-room team?

This might not be the correct terminology but I’ll explain what I mean. This is based off an office conversation this afternoon so I may have got the wrong end of the stick with some things that were said so bear with me here…

The PM is just the face of the party and there’s a team in the background who will be pulling all the strings and looking at popularity polls and reactions to proposals/announcements and that sort of thing - hence the spineless lack of conviction and the spinning top U-turns.

So is this ‘team’ a permanent fixture of the party regardless of who the face is or does the team change with each new leader?

If it’s a permanent fixture then why are there all these decisions that seemingly come from thin air and are poles apart from what was there before? Surely if it’s the same team then they should be tweaking rather than demolishing?

But if it’s a new team each time, I get that they probably want to make their mark or whatever, but again why are the new plans just so vastly different from the previous team?

Apologies if this is like British Politics 101 but I could probably do with something explaining it all to me like a 6-year-old because I just don’t get it.

So there's three different things here:

1) The cabinet, chosen by the PM and usually made up of MPs from their party (though they could be Lords as well.)

2) The PM's political staff, who aren't elected politicians and are appointed by him. (Eg Dominic Cummings, special advisors, etc.) Usually a new PM will bring in their own crew.

3) The civil service. They are permanent government employees who (in theory) don't make any decisions but instead talk ministers through their options, point out the possible pros and cons of any decision, then carry out what the ministers decide. Theoretically they stay in post even when there's a new Prime Minister or a change of governing party.

Normally a PM being replace by another member of their party would only mean minor changes to the overall policies because you're still relying on the same MPs to support and vote for them. Truss and Kwarteng making such rapid and drastic changes was part of what caused the general insanity of the past couple of months.

 

1 hour ago, Monkee said:

Genuine question: when Boris™️ resigned and there was the big battle for the new PM with debates on TV and all that shit, where did the money come from for that? Was that all funded by the party, by the individual standing, by the government or elsewhere?

I don’t know the ins and outs of politics, government or political parties, and I don’t even know what specifically to Google to find more information.

Entirely the party. It was a contest to choose the new party leader.

There is no election or contest for the role of Prime Minister. That just goes to whoever is "best placed to command a majority in the Commons" when the outgoing PM resigns as PM. In practice, that means the leader of the party (or group of parties) with the most MPs.

6 hours ago, wordsfromlee said:

Despite being the shortest ruling Prime Minister, she's now entitled to £115,000 per year paid for by the tax payer which is... GREAT!

It's not quite as bad as that sounds, though still bad. It's not a salary, it's a maximum expense allowance. It can only be claimed to pay for office and secretarial costs (so she doesn't get to keep any) and only for work done in her role as a former PM, not as a continuing MP. 

Whatever they spend, they then get another 10% to pay for pensions.

When somebody asked about what "office and secretarial costs" means, the relevant minister said "These costs can include diary support, Met Police protection on public visits, correspondence, staffing at public visits, support to charitable work, social media platforms and managing and maintaining ex-PMs office (staff, payroll, admin)."

https://www.gov.uk/government/publications/public-duty-cost-allowance/public-duty-costs-allowance-guidance

On the other hand, it is as bad as it sounds in the sense that in 2020-21 everyone other than May claimed the full amount

Krishnan Guru Murphy interviews Steve Baker live on TV. After the interview finishes and Channel 4 goes to a video package, a reporter standing next to Guru Murphy records the post-interview conversation: 

3 hours ago, BomberPat said:

@JNLister I'm glad you read it - I'm on holiday, so hadn't had chance to plug that post, and that and my Great Antonio bio are my favourite things I've written on that blog.

I wish I knew more about the circumstances behind that match, though, rather than just sort of throwing it out there. Probably requires some translation work to get to the bottom of it.

The other Geoff Capes wrestling tidbit I know is that he came 4th in the 1982 World's Strongest Man, which was won by Bill Kazmaier, with Tom McGee in second place. Chris Dolman actually wrestled Kazmaier too.

 

Also, Capes and Kazmaier were in the 1980 one alongside Billy Graham.

A former Chief Whip tweets enigmatically:

Not until reading this post https://www.patrickwreed.com/blog/ywi3yijbus8ga9w6tqlfh56isokwpp did I discover that this actually happened:
 

Top bants story from The Times: Johnson's resignation honours list turns out to nominate eight Tory MPs to become peers. Truss is trying to find some sort of "don't let them accept it until 2024" loophole as she is very much not up for eight by-elections right now.

While I knew him through wrestling, he was also our neighbour for three years. John was unique and there was no mistaking which was his house, but he was always extremely kind and courteous to my family. As with David Franklin ("Old David" on here), I always enjoyed picking his mind as somebody who'd been watching wrestling since the sixties and was still a fan today, and would give honest opinions about the good and bad of every era. It was also greatly amusing after moving all my stuff to be able to point out to my wife that I had only the second biggest collection of memorabilia in our street. (Among other things, he had literally tens of thousands of autographs of wrestlers, speedway people, circus performers and theatre stars.)

YouGov, who had the 33 point lead across Great Britain last week, have done a Scotland only poll. Combine those two polls in the Electoral Calculus votes-to-seats forecast and the result is fun:

 

So, most polls recently have had Labour's lead somewhere between 10 and 17 points. Let's see if polls conducted over the past 24 hours have changed.
 

Last week's Grand Designs:

I'm enjoying Westminster Hall cricket. It's left-side queue vs right-side queue. On your innings, you get a run for every person who nods the head, four for a shallow bow and six for a deep bow.

However, a sign of the cross is bowled, a courtsey is caught, a praying motion is lbw, blowing a kiss is a run out and a salute is a stumping.

Two innings per side, but if the game isn't complete by the changing of the guard, it's a draw. 

Starting to warm to the new King:
 

The Queen and Mrs McCluskey died on the same day. Insane.

https://www.expressandstar.com/news/uk-news/2022/09/12/grange-hill-actress-gwyneth-powell-dies-aged-76/

Certainly an unconventional pick at this moment, but I'm not sure it gets more commercial than literally being the face of money.

29 minutes ago, 69MeDon said:

I just don't get all this "she did her duty, we should be thankful of all that she did for us!" What? What the fuck was she going to do? Quit and go work down a mine?

She literally became Queen because her uncle decided he'd rather shag an American divorcee, hang round with the Nazis, then go live in the Bahamas.

Got to be fair to Truss, she's picked a cabinet without discriminating on grounds of gender, ethnic background or ability.

4 minutes ago, FUM said:

Ed Sheeran in Cardiff in May was £3.50 for the Heineken and £6.50 for a pint of Amstel. Probably around what I expected.

And both pumps are probably hooked up to the same keg.

As for Clash at the Castle, BT Sports has a four-hour slot for it. However, we're currently at six matches announced after Raw. Even with late additions (and even if they don't go in the pre-show), they surely can't be stretching it out the full four hours?