InigoPatinkin

I think it's more complicated than it appears on the surface. I think they were totally neglectful of limited overs cricket until very recently, so focused on test cricket by default and Duncan Fletcher started to modernise the way the country approached test cricket. They were incredibly passive during this time though and I think winning home Ashes series was seen as a victory. The first time the ECB properly focused on test cricket was when Flower came in and it clearly because a project to win the Ashes in Australia and the devoted a lot of resources to that specifically in the same way th

I'm disappointed for my US brethren that the $15 minimum wage didn't make it through (and I can see why people are annoyed that it hasn't happened), but that really is a pretty incredible amount of money directed to people who actually need it. I hope for once the Democrats can actually go about selling it as the victory it is and a reason people should vote for them next time. I know they won't, of course, but I really hope.

I think that's giving far too much credit to political parties being anything more than opportunistic to be honest. I don't think them repositioning themselves ideologically as pro-market was the reason for the more conservative nature of the UK political landscape, that happened much earlier. That happened because the 80's happened, Thatcher happened, Reaganomics happened and neoliberalism happened. New Labour was a response to a population that was so thoroughly opposed to socialism because that well had been poisoned that for any government to promote a socially left wing platform they had

That's proper ****ing mental.

The man who has made a living exploiting the media's obsession with giving anyone who says something controversial a platform complaining he's been deplatformed. It's a funny old world.

Again, if the cost of increasing living standards and lifting people out of poverty was that those people become hardened to the plight of people who were in those positions before and that is a bad thing, what exactly is Labour's winning condition in all of this? Are they supposed to keep people in poverty and austerity so that they have a reason to vote for a left wing government? Or are they supposed to keep the Tories in power so that people know benefits aren't high enough, because they're never actually going to increase? It's the whole first world problems argument, lifting people

I would argue New Labour justified their argument by winning elections while doing it.

The data shows that the swing occured pretty much immediately (as in 1998) as soon as Labour started spending though, it wasn't some gradual decline caused by New Labour's stance. Like it or not (and I don't, I really ****ing don't), Labour are viewed through different standards to the Tories (and it works both ways, although the media heavily unbalance that). A manifesto produced by Labour will be slammed for fiscal irresponsibility, while the same one for the Tories would be lauded as a progressive capitalist agenda. I suppose the opposite would be Labour getting little stick for allowing pr

That's because that's as a percentage of GDP (which went up) and total value (which was reduced because unemployment went down). Actual per person benefit payments relative to inflation went up.

Some of that is putting the cart before the horse though, Labour massively increased state and welfare spending when they got in in 1997. That increase in welfare spending and expansion of the state, combined with the economic crash was always going to lead to that shift. 10 years of austerity and slashes to welfare was always going to lead to a reversal in that. Then there's the recent phenomenon of UC to observe, now (even though it was recently increased) more people than ever (even during the JC Labour days when he was shouting about it) think it is too low... because more people ha

That should really be a pretty uniform decline across the board as it's not really unique to England. But I suppose you could argue lots of weaker teams leads to far more lopsided/one sided results dictated by a few great performances, which is something we've seen a lot more of recently I feel.

I assume the aim with Silverwood was to be competitive in the 21-22 Ashes, but Covid has probably meant that has come a bit too soon.

The standard of the ODI team is significantly higher because the ECB was focused on ODI cricket for a long time because of the world cup. Trevor Bayliss was brought in specifically for that aim and he did the job he was asked to do in turning England into the best ODI side in the world. The test team was on the back-burner for a while because of that, the new administration seems far more test focused this time around (given Silverwoods background at Essex, that's unsurprising). Ultimately it's about resources and for a long while those had been going into the ODI team, not the test team

The discussion was about whether the £0.66bn total cost figure was feasible/realistic, I was just pointing out that if the Maugham numbers were more accurate you'd need far less recuperation to hit the £0.66bn (approx. 20% less).