revolution saint

There you go, she did achieve some growth! Personally I'm hoping for a Braverman and Patel dream ticket with JRM on keyboard, John Redwood lead guitar and Dorries on drums.

Best solution to this is Truss resigns, party elects a new leader (amongst MPs) and the first bit of business is to set a date for a general election. Obviously it'll never happen though.

I'm busy with Iran at the moment and then I'm right on it with Brazil. I'm deliberately leaving a window open for Russia in the spring so the earliest I can do will be around May. I'll email a quote.

She's at a funeral following the untimely death of her economic plans.

Funny how you can never find a Tory voter during a Tory government and yet they still come out on polling day. It's like those mayflies that only live for a day and then die.

That's a masterpiece. Thank you.

They would have just moved it to Tate Modern where your culture vultures would have hailed it as a masterpiece.

Chris Philp gone from Treasury as well now. What a mess. Will be comical to see how Truss spins this - does she really believe anyone is going to buy the line that the mini budget was entirely down to the Chancellor? Knowing her she'll probably blame Putin/BoE/Anti-Growth coalition. We desperately need a General Election - even the Tories must recognise they're completely incompetent, undisciplined and unable to govern their own party let alone the country.

If it's anything like the work they do on the Millbrook and Redbridge flyovers then the delays will be a nightmare.

Yeah, true. I thought he looked half decent on his debut (was it against Arsenal or Man Utd?). Seem to recall he did some scissor kick that looked good and I honestly can't remember anything after that.

Surprised no one has mentioned Delgado yet.

It's an interesting question because I'm not sure Ralph can do anything now. I get the feeling he could pick the perfect 11 and the perfect formation and the players still wouldn't perform because they're either not listening to him or so low on confidence (or a combination of both). I'm not forgetting the squad isn't perfect BTW. Restoring confidence and a winning mentality would make more of a difference than any formation or personnel changes.

Yes.

Local jobs for local people?

Not seen the speech but apparently she talks about an "anti-growth coalition". Is she talking about Brexiteers?

Have I missed anything from the club since The Athletic piece?

Wouldn’t read too much into that article, it’s a rehash of the Athletic one. Probably doesn’t mean anything but would have expected someone like Jeremy Wilson or similar to have put out a piece expressing faith in Ralph, recognition of need for patience, young squad, injuries etc. Fact they haven’t yet gives me the impression that they’re getting closer to getting rid. All idle speculation on my part and there’s no reason they should be responding to the article.

Wonder if we hear from a club friendly journalist soon. Imagine the hierarchy would want to quash anything if they had no intention of getting rid, or at least not getting rid before the world cup.

Agree with this. They obviously gave him a remit to tighten up the defence which explains the failed 3 at the back experiment and ditching the high press. This season Ralph hasn't set the team up how he would want to if he had free reign. Problem is that he can't (and never has) been able to set a team up defensively for a prolonged period and it's come at the expense of any attacking threat we had. There's various mitigating factors but ultimately he's going and it might as well be sooner rather than later - if the mood amongst players is as bad as suggested then this article is only going to make that worse. Timing isn't great for a change but the prospects don't look good by keeping Ralph in the short term either.

Has anyone suggested a dream ticket appointment? They used to be all the rage and I think it’s time to give it a go. Obviously Theo Walcott is ideal as the (non) player manager but he’s going to need an older wiser head to advise and you don’t get much wiser than Dennis Wise; it’s literally his fucking name, talk about nominative determinism! Call me a crazy sky blue thinker but I think it might just work.

There was an Athletic article on AMN earlier in the week and it mentioned that Lavia is a couple of weeks away from a return. Not sure if that's based on the initial assessment of six weeks out or they know something more. For what it's worth, I'd play JWP, AMN and Diallo in midfield. Not the most attacking but might give us a bit more solidity and something to build on.

Is getting high inflationary?

Seems to me that whenever any economist has talked about growth in the recent past then the solution has been how to tackle poor productivity. Tax cuts don't address that, and even in the short term won't do much against a backdrop of rising inflation and rising interest rates. Productivity isn't all about getting us to work harder or smarter, it's also about attracting investment. Whether you're a brexiteer or a remainer, it's hard to deny that attracting investment has become much harder since 2016 and that's a big problem. It was a problem before then as well but it's even harder now. I think if you announced new borrowing to attract investment, to build and support business, and to tackle the main driver of inflation (cost of energy) then the market would probably support that. At the very least you wouldn't get the tanking of the value of sterling. Problem with all of that is it's not sexy and it doesn't yield immediate results. Truss and Kwarteng are still acting like they're in a tory election campaign and the only electorate are tory party members. They're ideologues convinced that cutting taxes will sort everything because that's what Thatcher did. They forget that she didn't do it until the economy could stand it. The line between whether this is Thatcherite or Reagonomics is irrelevant to the average person (it's mostly Reagonomics) but people know when they're worse off, they know it now and they know it's going to get a lot worse and quickly. As Lord D said, it's a hail mary but it's not a very good one. I can easily see Kwarteng gone by Christmas.

17 points in the latest YouGov poll isn't it? Agree if Labour fail to win next time around then they may as well give up.

Leaving aside the morality of invading a country and then holding a referendum, logistically how does it work? How is Russia contacting those Ukrainians who have fled the area? How is it conducting referenda in areas that it doesn't actually control but the vote would apply to?