Best Of

@TSE I'm just putting together a header on the changes to motoring law that I will submit a bit later - aiming for 9,30am so perhaps one for this afternoon.

I'm writing it then popping out for my walk before coming back for a final check.

@MattW one thing that occurs to me is that the new drink drive limit will likely catch out a lot of drivers in the morning. Anecdotally, that's what happened in Scotland with people driving to work on a Saturday morning only 7 hours after their last pint.

A bit after the horse has bolted though. Drug driving is now a bigger issue I think. On older people, politically fraught but there is very clear evidence driving standards fall dramatically after 70. This wasn't such a big issue when we had decent bus provision - now taking a licence away can be devastating for people.

Also the spread of housing estates far beyond sensible, in terms of public transport. I see estates being built in farmland in places which are sometimes a couple of miles from the nearest bus stop. Anyone living there is going to have problems when they get too old to tool around in their cars.

Although community is quite strong in rural areas in terms of lifts and there are taxis of course too

'New housing estates' are not the same as 'rural communities.' They would be more like plantations with lots of new people moving in.

In towns with lots of farmland nearby taxis can be at rather a premium too. They hang out in major conurbations.

It's almost as if there is an advantage to building cities as a series of villages/small towns, each with their own facilities, merged into a larger structure by transport links.

I can't see value, unless eg Donald Trump could throw a tantrum and demand David Lammy go, as a kind of black swan.

Are there any other possible "unpredictables"?

Given the announcement on drink driving, I'd say the Heidi Alexander is safe for a bit.

What does Hillary Benn do?

"Show some respect"
"Have you ever apologised for the end of slavery?"

Got to feel sorry for Lammy, he gets a top job at the absolute worst time

David Lammy is the underrated star of this government. The Harvard-educated lawyer seems to have struck up a useful relationship with the Yale-educated lawyer JD Vance, and helped gain Britain a good deal with America (ok, it's all relative). Even in opposition, Lammy got Starmer an invitation to the D-Day commemorations.

Lewis Goodall
@lewis_goodall
·
1h
It is quite something to see much of what was once the mainstream right predicting, hoping for, braying for “revolt/revolution”.

Very few people hoping for this revolution wish to see an end to the monarchy, parliamentary democracy, the army or even the rule of law. People just want seismic political change.

Centrists are only saying the mainstream right are hoping for riots because they themselves fear rioting will happen, and are positioning so as to be able to attack their political enemies for it. Boringly predictable

We centrists have eyes, we read X, we even read PB. "Nobody on my side is actioning for civil disorder" - coooome onnnnn, that claim is utterly, utterly risible in 2025 after the last 12 months.

It may not be the median position of the median member on the mainstream right, but it is common enough within the mainstream - we have pulled people on here up on it enough times who are not overly Reformy in nature and no I'm not going to trawl back through all that mire to prove it in response to such gaslighting.

Liverpool fans boo the national anthem then the crowd prevent the full minute silence for Jota

What have we become as a nation

https://x.com/BBCSport/status/1954547342440649136?t=30KveTdfBh6O3sRk7hK1Pw&s=19

I don't know how long you've been following football for but Liverpool have booed the national anthem since the eighties at least after the rest of the country, led by the Tories, left them to out to dry.

Seriously, you spend so much time clutching your pearls I'm amazed your fingers have enough strength left to type,

Given lots of the country suffered from de-industrialisation, why do you think it is only Liverpool that take this view?

Because of this, I don't think anything has emerged about similar being said about other areas.

Margaret Thatcher was secretly urged to consider abandoning Liverpool to a fate of "managed decline" after the Toxteth riots in 1981, official papers reveal.

https://www.bbc.co.uk/news/uk-16361170

To his credit Michael Heseltine refused to countenance managed decline for Liverpool & has been, I think, proven right in the long term.

To her credit, so did Thatcher.

"She was urged" doesn't mean "she decided".

She was quite good at figuring out when the “experts” were being fuckwits.

In the aftermath of the Brighton Bombing, they advocated all kinds of idiocy. Most of which would have made things 1000x worse - reintroduction of internment?!!. Thatcher, with the dust on her from the bombing, initiated the twin track policy. Track one - peace process, Track Two - infiltrate and destroy the paramilitaries from within. Which culminated in double agents in the PIRA killing off those opposed to the peace process.

On the flip side, she went against her personal instincts to go with the highly effective socio-medical campaign against AIDS - because the medical advice was coherent and cogent.

This is why she was such a brilliant PM.

She's possibly the most intelligent one we've ever had.

I would quibble slightly.

Harold Wilson, one of the youngest Oxford dons of the century at the age of 21, a lecturer in Economic History at New College from 1937, and a research fellow at University College, was probably more intelligent academically.

But he had terrible judgement, and consigned Britain to managed decline.

Mrs Thatcher had a good, upper-second class mind. But great judgement, self-confidence and perseverance, so the country flourished.

Judgement and intelligence are no more than loosely associated, as Noam Chomsky and all the rest of the Commie intelligensia show all the time.

A smallish country colonising a third of the planet consigns itself thereafter to (relative) decline. So if his contribution was the 'managed' bit then that's a plus.

But you're correct on the main point. Wilson was our cleverest PM. A brain with a pipe, basically.

Wilson was an incredibly shrewd politician. And the poster accusing Wilson of managing decline in the same post as eulogising Thatcher.

Thather's USP was managed decline, see the destruction of manufacturing, the replacement of primary and tertiary domestic production with that of the Common Market countries and Japan, and the sale of national economic treasures to foreign asset strippers.

Liverpool fans boo the national anthem then the crowd prevent the full minute silence for Jota

What have we become as a nation

https://x.com/BBCSport/status/1954547342440649136?t=30KveTdfBh6O3sRk7hK1Pw&s=19

I don't know how long you've been following football for but Liverpool have booed the national anthem since the eighties at least after the rest of the country, led by the Tories, left them to out to dry.

Seriously, you spend so much time clutching your pearls I'm amazed your fingers have enough strength left to type,

Given lots of the country suffered from de-industrialisation, why do you think it is only Liverpool that take this view?

Because of this, I don't think anything has emerged about similar being said about other areas.

Margaret Thatcher was secretly urged to consider abandoning Liverpool to a fate of "managed decline" after the Toxteth riots in 1981, official papers reveal.

https://www.bbc.co.uk/news/uk-16361170

To his credit Michael Heseltine refused to countenance managed decline for Liverpool & has been, I think, proven right in the long term.

To her credit, so did Thatcher.

"She was urged" doesn't mean "she decided".

She was quite good at figuring out when the “experts” were being fuckwits.

In the aftermath of the Brighton Bombing, they advocated all kinds of idiocy. Most of which would have made things 1000x worse - reintroduction of internment?!!. Thatcher, with the dust on her from the bombing, initiated the twin track policy. Track one - peace process, Track Two - infiltrate and destroy the paramilitaries from within. Which culminated in double agents in the PIRA killing off those opposed to the peace process.

On the flip side, she went against her personal instincts to go with the highly effective socio-medical campaign against AIDS - because the medical advice was coherent and cogent.

This is why she was such a brilliant PM.

She's possibly the most intelligent one we've ever had.

I would quibble slightly.

Harold Wilson, one of the youngest Oxford dons of the century at the age of 21, a lecturer in Economic History at New College from 1937, and a research fellow at University College, was probably more intelligent academically.

But he had terrible judgement, and consigned Britain to managed decline.

Mrs Thatcher had a good, upper-second class mind. But great judgement, self-confidence and perseverance, so the country flourished.

Judgement and intelligence are no more than loosely associated, as Noam Chomsky and all the rest of the Commie intelligensia show all the time.

A smallish country colonising a third of the planet consigns itself thereafter to (relative) decline. So if his contribution was the 'managed' bit then that's a plus.

But you're correct on the main point. Wilson was our cleverest PM. A brain with a pipe, basically.

Wilson was an incredibly shrewd politician. And the poster accusing Wilson of managing decline in the same post as eulogising Thatcher.

Thather's USP was managed decline, see the destruction of manufacturing, the replacement of primary and tertiary domestic production with that of the Common Market countries and Japan, and the sale of national economic treasures to foreign asset strippers.

Hardly, Thatcher made the City of London into the economic powerhouse of Europe, revived Docklands and ended union domination and took the UK from one of the lowest per capita nations in Europe to one of the highest, plus investment in the NE from the likes of Nissan.

More mines closed under Wilson than Thatcher

Only with the boost of North Sea oil, though. Any fool could do a lot with North Sea oil money.

No sovereign wealth fund, either. Compare and contrast: Norway.

This must now be one of the sunniest and maybe warmest summers on record? And spring was remarkably nice

Not 1976 but very pleasant

On Starmer's watch.

Feels like almost every day is “nice” or “really nice”

Not “nice but a bit fucking hot” like Italy or Spain or indeed Nice

Just highly agreeable. 25C and a few clouds

Anecdatish, but it doesn't feel it. It's nice - today was nice - but the last six weeks have been warm but not that sunny. Not unsunny - just no better than average for the time of year. And after a remarkably sunny Mar-Jun, it feels a bit hohum.
My solar generatiom for May this year was my biggest month ever - better than any June.
And there were very few days' play lost in the T20 Blast, and almost none before midsummer.

But today was a perfect summer's day. Oldest daughter has been to the park to meet friends and indulge in the teen summer pasttime of letting a chocolate bar belt and dipping strawberries in it. Younger two daughters have been off to the Mersey Valley to pick blackberries. The wifeand I did some gardening then relaxed in the afterglow of our exertions with a ginger beer. We are, today, living in an idealised 1950s England.

I've just been off blackberry picking with my daughter.

I then had a swift one, and am now cooking fish fingers for the kids and will shortly put on David Attenborough.

Perfect.

Poor David. I am sure the fish fingers would have been enough.

Russia invaded the Baltic states three times last century, occupying them for decades after WWII.
It's not exactly surprising they're worried about a repeat.

Latvia, Lithuania and Estonia may become Putin's next target - because of this, the leaders of the Baltic countries criticized any attempts to force Ukraine to cede territory, writes FT.
https://x.com/front_ukrainian/status/1954123898296975865

It’s been a very long running piece of irredentism that any land that was ever part of the Russian Empire is part of the New Russian Empire (of whatever version)

The USSR had it as policy. Putin has made it the policy of his party.

Russia devastated the Baltics several times in the 20thC (twice playing tag team with the Germans).
Ideologically friendly Balts formed the backbone of the early Bolshevik Red Army, and the Cheka (and later died in Stalin's purges).

Others provided slave labour for various projects between the two world wars, or died in the gulags.

The hatred and distrust of Russia has deep and well grounded foundations.

As with Ukraine, history has inconvenient facts for anyone seeking one-dimensional heroes and villains, from Putin to each of us. See https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Wartime_collaboration_in_the_Baltic_states for the other side of the story.

Rather than rely on history, with nearly all the actors no longer alive, it's best to concentrate on the present. The Baltic States seem all to have large majorities who are happy to be independent, and we should support that, while reserving the right to be critical of treatment of pro-Russian minorities. Personally I doubt if there's a serious threat, because of their NATO membership, which makes them very different from Ukraine, but there's no reason why we shouldn't reinforce the commitment to supporting their independence.

The problem is Nick, I don't believe you.

When Ukraine was invaded (again...) in 2022, you blamed everyone but Russia. We shouldn't 'poke' Russia into invading, Ukrainian Nazi's, etc. Pure victim-blaming and whitewashing of Putin's fascism and imperialism.

I daresay when Russia does invade the Baltics or elewhere, you will be full-on excusing-Russia mode.