Skip to main content

Political exhaustion

Watching our Prime Minister right now is like watching a prisoner on death row, he's only got his last meal to look forward to.  The rest is a void.  Civil servants have shut down, and MPs are working in their constituency and getting ready for an election that will be declared in the next few months (or weeks).  The policy machines are stopped and ministers have gone home.  There is no point in preparing or introducing new legislation, everyone knows that it's going nowhere.  There is, of course, a bit of makework, and some ministers, especially those who know that they are almost done, are enjoying the last few bits.  

Before Christmas, I had dinner with two very old friends both Tory MPs.  One, who won his seat by the skin of his teeth at the last election knows that he's done.  He told us that he is polling third.  He was re-selected by default no one wanted to run against him for the Tory ticket.  He's a ridiculously smart fellow, got a first, and postgrad degree in the US.  He's gone, he already sold his house, and his flat in London, and bought a new place abroad.  He was forthright, saying that because of his role in government, he would end up being a talking head.  He said, "I have better things to do with my life than that".  The other was elected in a Tory stronghold, his family has deep ties to the county.  He cannot quit now, it would damage his family's reputation.  He will sit in the opposition for a few years.  He too was a junior minister (there are 60).  As he said, the day I leave politics I know exactly what I will do!  

The two are my main source of information about the travail of the Tories, I only ever write about it, rarely when it has become public.  We discussed my decision to vote Labour, in the next general election.  I'm not sure it will make much of a difference in my case my Tory MP got over 60% of the vote the last time around.

Both have spent the past 15 years in politics, and both are thoroughly exhausted from the hunt, one is getting out ideally before the summer, at worst before November (The odds are end of May apparently).  The issue for Sunak is that even his cabinet wants this over with.  Their electoral machines are ready to go.  We shall see!

Comments

Post a Comment

Popular posts from this blog

Ok so I lied...a little (revised)

When we began looking at farming in 2013/14 as something we both wanted to do as a "second career" we invested time and money to understand what sector of farming was profitable.  A few things emerged, First, high-quality, source-proven, organic farm products consistently have much higher profit margins.  Secondly, transformation accounted for nearly 80% of total profits, and production and distribution accounted for 20% of profits: Farmers and retailers have low profit margins and the middle bits make all the money. A profitable farm operation needs to be involved in the transformation of its produce.  The low-hanging fruits: cheese and butter.  Milk, generates a profit margin of 5% to 8%, depending on milk quality.  Transformed into cheese and butter, and the profit margin rises to 40% (Taking into account all costs).  Second:  20% of a steer carcass is ground beef quality.  The price is low, because (a) a high percentage of the carcass, and (b) ground beef requires process
Post a Comment
Read more

Spray painting Taylor Swift G650 aircraft (updated)

 First, a bit of paint will not harm anyone.  These climate activities are going to learn two things in the next few days:  (1) Trespassing at an airport is a felony almost anywhere in the world.  That means criminal prosecution.   (2) removing paint from an aircraft is expensive.   So these climate activists are about to find out the reach of the British criminal system and it will not be pleasant, the UK has very strict laws about that, I would be surprised if cleaning the aircraft of all the paint will cost less than $100,000.     I am sure that when they planned (premeditation) this little show they had a very valid logic to doing this.  Tonight, they are probably realizing the depth of their troubles.   I understand that in the UK it's a minimum one-year jail sentence.    Also, good luck travelling with a criminal trespass charge against you.  I am relatively certain that the airline industry will slap them with no-fly status. Update;  It seems that what they threw on the airc
Post a Comment
Read more

21st century milk parlour

When we first looked at building our farm in 2018, we made a few money-saving decisions, the most important is that we purchased our milk herd from a retiring farmer and we also purchased his milking parlour equipment.  It was the right decision at the time.  The equipment dates from around 2004/05 and was perfectly serviceable, our installers replaced some tubing but otherwise, the milking parlour was in good shape.  It is a mature technology. Now, we are building a brand new milk parlour because our milking cows are moving from the old farm to the new farm.  So we are looking at brand new equipment this time because, after 20 years of daily service, the old cattle parlour's systems need to be replaced.  Fear not it will not be destroyed instead good chunks will end up on Facebook's marketplace and be sold to other farmers for spare parts or expansion of their current systems. All our cattle are chipped, nothing unusual there, we have sensors throughout the farm, and our milki
Post a Comment
Read more