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Rachel Reeves and Chess
Posted: Sun Jun 09, 2024 11:24 am
by Matthew Turner
Just very randomly saw this Facebook post which I think will be of interest from a few months ago. Apologies, if it has already been mentioned here but I cannot recall seeing ot before
https://www.facebook.com/rachelreeves10 ... 5775275713
Re: Rachel Reeves and Chess
Posted: Wed Jun 12, 2024 10:23 am
by Gerard Killoran
Being good at chess means you are good at chess, no more, no less.
Ken Rogoff was a GM which didn't stop him doing untold damage with his poor economics.
https://www.bbc.co.uk/news/magazine-22223190
https://www.theguardian.com/politics/20 ... -austerity
https://theconversation.com/the-reinhar ... mics-13646
I once beat Helen Milligan OTB - and she was British and Scottish Women's champion. Should I be the next Chancellor of the Exchequer?
Re: Rachel Reeves and Chess
Posted: Wed Jun 12, 2024 10:42 am
by Kevin Thurlow
She says she wants working people to be better off, so I assume the unpaid interns in her office are celebrating their first pay-cheques!
Re: Rachel Reeves and Chess
Posted: Wed Jun 12, 2024 4:49 pm
by Matt Mackenzie
Gerard Killoran wrote: ↑Wed Jun 12, 2024 10:23 am
Being good at chess means you are good at chess, no more, no less.
There are few better examples of this than certain past world champions.
Re: Rachel Reeves and Chess
Posted: Wed Jun 12, 2024 8:21 pm
by Matt Fletcher
From a previous thread on Rachel Reeves - an example of her play (against me, many years ago!)
Matt Fletcher wrote: ↑Wed Feb 27, 2013 8:34 pm
Rachel was in my age group as a junior and we played in a number of the same tournaments - I have a couple of games against her in my old scorebooks.
This is the better of them, from almost 20 years ago:
Re: Rachel Reeves and Chess
Posted: Mon Jul 08, 2024 10:40 am
by Ian Thompson
Some references to Rachel Reeves playing chess on today's
Woman's Hour on Radio 4, about 16 minutes into the programme.
According to Harriet Harman something that shows she will be a good chancellor is that she was "beating all the men at chess before she was a teenager."
According to Rachel Cunliffe (political correspondent of the New Statesman) she, and her sister, used to turn up at chess tournaments as state educated schoolgirls and consequently be "underestimated by posh public schoolboys" they were playing against.
Re: Rachel Reeves and Chess
Posted: Mon Jul 08, 2024 11:59 am
by Roger Lancaster
It's dangerous to assume, as some on this forum seem to have done, that Rachel Reeves will be favourably disposed towards chess simply because she plays or played herself. If you're the Chancellor of the Exchequer having to preside over austerity, what better way of demonstrating your bona fides than by denying funding to a personally favourite activity?
Re: Rachel Reeves and Chess
Posted: Mon Jul 08, 2024 12:05 pm
by Paul McKeown
Post deleted to stop Daily Mail journocunts from bothering me with unsolicited phone calls.
Re: Rachel Reeves and Chess
Posted: Mon Jul 08, 2024 4:35 pm
by Matt Mackenzie
Roger Lancaster wrote: ↑Mon Jul 08, 2024 11:59 am
It's dangerous to assume, as some on this forum seem to have done, that Rachel Reeves will be favourably disposed towards chess simply because she plays or played herself. If you're the Chancellor of the Exchequer
having to preside over austerity, what better way of demonstrating your bona fides than by denying funding to a personally favourite activity?
We shall see if this actually turns out to be the case, I suppose.
Re: Rachel Reeves and Chess
Posted: Mon Jul 08, 2024 4:47 pm
by John Upham
Matt Mackenzie wrote: ↑Mon Jul 08, 2024 4:35 pm
We shall see if this actually turns out to be the case, I suppose.
What will be your time scale for this potential observation?
Re: Rachel Reeves and Chess
Posted: Mon Jul 08, 2024 5:03 pm
by Nick Burrows
John Upham wrote: ↑Mon Jul 08, 2024 4:47 pm
Matt Mackenzie wrote: ↑Mon Jul 08, 2024 4:35 pm
We shall see if this actually turns out to be the case, I suppose.
What will be your time scale for this potential observation?
64 days
Re: Rachel Reeves and Chess
Posted: Mon Jul 08, 2024 8:10 pm
by Angus French
Matt Mackenzie wrote: ↑Mon Jul 08, 2024 4:35 pm
Roger Lancaster wrote: ↑Mon Jul 08, 2024 11:59 am
It's dangerous to assume, as some on this forum seem to have done, that Rachel Reeves will be favourably disposed towards chess simply because she plays or played herself. If you're the Chancellor of the Exchequer
having to preside over austerity, what better way of demonstrating your bona fides than by denying funding to a personally favourite activity?
We shall see if this actually turns out to be the case, I suppose.
Just to say, I don't think Labour will
have to preside over austerity. Their
manifesto states "
there will be no return to austerity" and provides some scope for manoeuvre with the fiscal rule: "
Debt must be falling as a share of the economy by the fifth year of the forecast". Austerity is a political choice and, so far as I understand it, a bad one in an economic downturn when you want to encourage growth.
Re: Rachel Reeves and Chess
Posted: Mon Jul 08, 2024 10:39 pm
by Roger Lancaster
Some perfectly reasonable responses to my original post which merely sought to advise against counting unhatched chickens.
Re: Rachel Reeves and Chess
Posted: Tue Jul 09, 2024 12:37 am
by Matt Mackenzie
Angus French wrote: ↑Mon Jul 08, 2024 8:10 pm
Matt Mackenzie wrote: ↑Mon Jul 08, 2024 4:35 pm
Roger Lancaster wrote: ↑Mon Jul 08, 2024 11:59 am
It's dangerous to assume, as some on this forum seem to have done, that Rachel Reeves will be favourably disposed towards chess simply because she plays or played herself. If you're the Chancellor of the Exchequer
having to preside over austerity, what better way of demonstrating your bona fides than by denying funding to a personally favourite activity?
We shall see if this actually turns out to be the case, I suppose.
Just to say, I don't think Labour will
have to preside over austerity. Their
manifesto states "
there will be no return to austerity" and provides some scope for manoeuvre with the fiscal rule: "
Debt must be falling as a share of the economy by the fifth year of the forecast". Austerity is a political choice and, so far as I understand it, a bad one in an economic downturn when you want to encourage growth.
Agree with all this.
Whatever else you say about her, RR is an intelligent person and must surely be aware of the above too.
So let's wait and see.
Re: Rachel Reeves and Chess
Posted: Tue Jul 09, 2024 3:39 pm
by Paul McKeown
Given the previous 14 years of Tory chaos, corruption, pandering to the rentier economy, complete neglect of the real economy, ideologically driven destruction of the nation's social capital, a laughing two fingers raised to the environment that we live in, stoking of culture wars rather than attempting to heal the divisions in society or to fix the obviously cratered national infrastructure and the attempts at gunship diplomacy with all our most important allies, only without the gunships, Gideon having already had them all scrapped, I struggle to see how Rachel Reeves could possibly fail to do better than the bunch of cretins who took the Maoist approach of tearing everything down in a process of supposedly creative destruction, merely to discover that all they left behind was shite pouring into all our national waterways. My main criticism of the incoming Labour government would be that it will attempt to govern rather to the right of where the political heart of the nation is currently beating. Of course, this will not stop a miasma of ridiculous bile pouring out of the usual orifices of the Fourth Estate.