A few people are going in for more and longer contributions. I am going to start deleting some for length and multiple posting.
Some want to make comparisons with Hitler and Nazis. This is usually inappropriate. Make points using proportionate language,
One wannabe poster every day submits a variant of the same posting alleging a couple of billionaires run the world and control the governments. We have discussed this in the past. I have no intention of posting these. Go elsewhere to pursue.
June 19, 2024
Sir John
I admit to be one of the over explainers, sometimes a sound-bite doesn’t quite work when the subject is multi-faceted and intertwined with many other things.
I apologize
Ian
June 19, 2024
Very wise.
In my opinion, we are lucky that you have kept this site going, so we can still air our views in a reasonable manner, and read the views of others,
I have enjoyed it over the years, and learnt things too.
June 19, 2024
I should have added I more than appreciate the efforts you have gone into to bring us the Forum for our views. I am amazed at your effort.
Sir John, you are the Editor and arbiter of what appears that goes without saying.
June 19, 2024
CG. It’s just a pity our views will no longer be expressed in Parliament. We have lost our voice
June 19, 2024
The other 649 MPs are too scared to have a site like this ….thank you SirJ for maintaining this diary
June 19, 2024
Is it fair and not misleading to say that taxes will be cut should the Conservatives win? Whilst some taxes will be cut will the overall tax take still increase because of Chancellor Hunt’s existing stealth taxes?
June 20, 2024
Hunt’s stealth taxes will remain with Labour but with knobs on.
Is it fair for labour to say taxes won’t rise on VAT, Income tax or NI without saying thresholds won’t be changed? If they remove the NI cap that would be an NI increase. If they remove the pensioner exemption on NI that would be an increase. If they drop the VAT threshold that would be an increase in VAT. Have you heard one of our so-called fair interviewers asking about thresholds and the effect of increased taxation?
June 19, 2024
I apologise for repetitions, BUT most of the people out there also think the Tories have ****** up the country, and deserve whats coming. We also thought our only hope was to have a MASS epiphany of the Conservative MPs and senior big-shots to grow a pair and sort things out step by step.
Clearly that ain’t going to happen until after the predicted event.
In the meantime the disciple has taken the reins and just might steer the old nag to be well placed against the odds. Maybe the longshot will go to the stud and produce some more in his likeness.
I appreciate being allowed to use this space.
June 20, 2024
I don’t think the Tories have ****** up the country.
I think Rishi has damaged the Tories. His team discovered gambling when he declared the election date (have you ever?). It’s all very odd; he and his family seem lovely, but he is an assassin to the other Tories around him.
Things will get very tough for savers and retirees who will not have time to readjust and recover from the tsunami of extra taxes that will hit them.
I wonder how many business people think I wish I’d sold up and got out.
All these people you read saying, haha, rich people are going to have to pay vat for their kids schools! Hehe, wait until they realise those same people can make quick savings to their spending that might affect them. The restaurant Labour supporter who charges £200 per head for a meal and a drink, if they’ve got 2 kids they need to save on average £10,000 per year, if they eat out in a restaurant like that once per week and change to a restaurant that charges £100 per head, they’d make that saving but will the fancy restauranteur survive? These people are rich because they are often savvy and intelligent.
Rich people don’t seem to act as expected. For example, The Ikea founder from Sweden died at 91. He kept his old Volvo and worked until he was in his mid-80s. He was thrifty, but he still liked to avoid high taxes. He left his money in a Liechtensten foundation to preserve the ‘families’ wealth and support his chosen charitable initiatives probably felt he’d do a better job than any government, they should have asked his advice.
June 19, 2024
Long overdue, IMO. Happy to read comments, not essays. As SJR says if you don’t like it, start your own blog
June 19, 2024
Lengthily posed questions are worthy of more than one liners. Politicians live with soundbites, the real world is usually much more complex.
Some seem to think your diary is a means of letting off steam. It works in the other direction, in that you get a feel for what people are thinking, often way ahead of the thinking in Westminster. Multiple and predictable posting is an accepted problem, I think 21 to 1 is my last count, but comments on contributors are often informative. WW2 does carry a few lessons and warnings of history about to be repeated, but comparing one of your ex colleagues to one of its despots is not. Will try to keep my responses objective and continue enjoying the process.
June 19, 2024
The Diary belongs to the Author to include or exclude whatever he feels appropriate.
Sir John’s content is excellent. Moderation is prompt and efficient, often over-tolerant in allowing negative, off-topic and careless comments in pursuit of free speech.
It is we, who read and comment, who need to improve by conforming; making brief relevant remarks without exaggeration or harsh opinion about others.
Sir John maintains high quality standards in every dimension. We could improve ours by checking our own accuracy and grammar with more brevity than this!
June 19, 2024
“more and longer contributions” I wonder who that could be?
We have heard of deleting posts several times before but it never seems to have any effect.
The ‘wannabe poster’ posts under the name of a brand of women’s hosiery and occasionally pops up on other sites with these claims, along with a mention of this site. Remarkably persistent.
June 19, 2024
Sorry if I appear cantankerous Sir John but how can one refer to a specific and unique political group, in a country were not everyone supported such an ideology even if they were forced to live under its rule. Surely it is not the word but the context in which it is used that is the problem. Referring to just a span of dates and a country might identify the period but tars everyone, even those brave people who fought against political oppression or tyranny.
Never mind that I’ve probably used ten times as many words to describe one word that I should not be using!
June 19, 2024
“Sorry if I appear cantankerous….”
First prize for self awareness Jerry.
June 20, 2024
@Sam; I’ll take that as a compliment, at least I’m both old and wise enough to be cantankerous! 😛
June 19, 2024
Perhaps a rule of just one or two posts per person per day might be useful.
I enjoy reading your excellent daily articles Sir John and I also enjoy reading many of the comments but there are a few posters who comment dozens of times every day with long essays.
June 19, 2024
I apologise if I post too much. I suspect my posts will tail off after the election and when the war in Ukraine is settled. In the mean time, have we reached an inflection point: – have you seen this:
‘My firm People Polling, on behalf of its client GB News, surveyed a nationally representative sample of 1,228 British adults. We asked them how they plan to vote at the UK general election on July 4.
Here are our numbers:
Labour 35%
Reform 24%
Conservatives 15%
Liberal Democrats 12%
Greens 8%
SNP 3%
That’s right. Nigel Farage and Reform are on 24%, in second place, and some 9-points clear of Rishi Sunak and the Tories.
Were the above numbers to appear at the general election, in only fifteen days time, then the result would be, well, seismic in more ways than one.
Keir Starmer and the Labour Party would win the election comfortably, with a Labour majority of around 240 seats.
The Tories would crash and burn, falling to only around 45 seats. The Lib Dems would finish with more seats than the Tories, on around 64. Nigel Farage and Reform would not be far behind, on around 50. And the Greens would win two.’
June 19, 2024
LA – the people are extremly fickle. They have tried and tested both the Cons and labour and NOTHING changes, yet they still vote for these two parties. The people have nothing to lose by voting REFORM not that they can do anything but just to give the two main stream parties a kick up the back side. Regretably with the corrupt postal voting system, deliberately introduced by globalist Blair still in place, voting irregularities and abuse will continue. Remember which ever party “wins” nothing will change until our whole system of government is changed, starting from the VERY TOP. The Globalist UK Establishment run the show and have done for centuries.
However change is on the horizon and Nothing can stop what is coming, Nothing and the enormity of what is coming will shock the world.
June 19, 2024
Oops, from Matt Goodwin.
June 19, 2024
@LA; Best you don’t look at the Savanta/Daily Telegraph MRP survey (excludes NI) published this afternoon, 19 June;
Lab 516; Con 53; LD 50, PC 4; SNP 8; others 1 (Green) – Reform would win 0 seats.
Vote Reform, get Labour, and quite possible the the LDs as the official opposition…
June 20, 2024
It all depends on the honesty, motivation to survey sufficient numbers in a wide range of views and locations.
And of course does the piper who plays the tune require a specific outcome?
June 20, 2024
The commissioner of any survey is anonymous- did you not know? Never commissioned a survey?
June 20, 2024
@LA; Your point being what, even if you are correct about anonymity, what Mickey pointed out was that the commissioner of the survey chooses the format, sample size etc, even locality, after all, any poll commissioned by the SNP for example is hardly going to want to know what people in Cornwall think! Nor do those commission these polls sign blank cheques.
The Savanta/DT poll was national, with a sample size of 18,000 using the more in depth “Multilevel regression with poststratification” (MRP) methodology.
You cited a GBNews poll Lynn; can you confirm that it was a national poll, rather than perhaps a constituency poll that has been extrapolated to get a national result, what was its sample size and methodology?
With apologizes to our host, for this hijacking his plea for us all to post less!
June 19, 2024
I believe that one post and one reply is enough .
June 20, 2024
@Bert+Young; How would your idea, which is suspiciously similar to Martin in Bristol’s idea (just saying…), be policed by our host. Would it not just cause some to use multiple IDs to push their pro Reform or whatever ideals?
I would welcome proper user accounts, based on authenticated email addresses and what IP numbers the commentator uses, it has been suggested before but our host for whatever reason doesn’t want to travel that road.
June 19, 2024
May I ask whether all references to Nazis are prohibited? I did put a post the other day which got deleted in which I quoted a Labour politician, shortly expected to be a senior minister, describing Donald Trump as a Nazi – I did check the quote. The purpose of the post was to say how undesirable it is for the UK to have as a minister a person who has described the past and possible future President of the US in such a way.
June 20, 2024
‘One wannabe poster every day submits a variant of the same posting alleging a couple of billionaires run the world and control the governments.’
I’ve been reading ‘The psychology of totalitarianism’ by Mattias Desmet at the moment. I think the arguments are presented back to front, from the ground up, so it takes a while to know how the interesting chapters make a whole, but it’s worth sticking with.
He explains why the wannabe poster thinks this. He sees what bonkers view some 30% of a population will hold having become a ‘mass formation’. (Why they hold this Desmet explains earlier.) A big majority agree with the poster that it’s bonkers, say 50-60%, but won’t speak up either through fear or wanting a quiet life. That leaves a minority 10% who not only see the ideology underpinning the formation, and realise its flaws, but also spot the danger of leaving it unchallenged. They speak out. Think Lionel Shriver, Douglas Murray, Rod Liddle, etc.
Good so far. But there’s a small percentage of those who are willing to speak out who don’t understand how that bonkers view can logically be held. They demand and seek a logical explanation, but there isn’t one. Post-Enlightenment, they think mechanistically that all must be explainable through observation and logic. But this isn’t true. There is no logic to thinking some bonkers beliefs; they’re not held for being correct. Regardless, a logical explanation is made up: two billionaires rule the world. And they’re lizards. This gives them comfort in a very similar way the bonkers view comforts the significant minority, but on a smaller scale.