Best Of

"A majority of the public think that the UK should bring back the death penalty, with the strongest support among millennials, a poll has found." (£)

https://www.thetimes.com/uk/law/article/majority-britons-support-death-penalty-poll-scw7glncg

God, youth of today.

One in 20 members of the public even backed using capital punishment against shoplifters.

That's the didn't read, lobotomised, wind-up artist, or nutter demographic, surely?

I recall one where several percent of African-Americans thought slavery was a good thing.

Slavery gets shit done.

Best feat in engineering are the Pyramids, all thanks to slave labour.

Don't be silly, that was extra-terrestrials!

Pyramids are anyway shit. And hardly feats of engineering at all. There's a reason nobody's bothered building any since the ancient Egyptians - they're pointless, boring and a complete waste of time, space and money.

This is the first polemic against Pyramids I've ever come across. Excellent stuff. Very PB.com.

If there is one thing pyramids are demonstrably not, it is pointless.
It's at the top.

But I agree with kinabalu. Solid effort and post of the day.

"A majority of the public think that the UK should bring back the death penalty, with the strongest support among millennials, a poll has found." (£)

https://www.thetimes.com/uk/law/article/majority-britons-support-death-penalty-poll-scw7glncg

God, youth of today.

One in 20 members of the public even backed using capital punishment against shoplifters.

That's the didn't read, lobotomised, wind-up artist, or nutter demographic, surely?

I recall one where several percent of African-Americans thought slavery was a good thing.

Slavery gets shit done.

Best feat in engineering are the Pyramids, all thanks to slave labour.

So Pharaoh Tut standing behind a board with "Kickstart economic growth" neatly written in hieroglyphs, declared "let's build a pyramid!"

Apparently the pyramids were overtaken as the world's tallest buildings a mere four thousand years later by the Eiffel Tower.

Errrrr. *Lincoln Cathedral.*

"A majority of the public think that the UK should bring back the death penalty, with the strongest support among millennials, a poll has found." (£)

https://www.thetimes.com/uk/law/article/majority-britons-support-death-penalty-poll-scw7glncg

God, youth of today.

One in 20 members of the public even backed using capital punishment against shoplifters.

That's the didn't read, lobotomised, wind-up artist, or nutter demographic, surely?

I recall one where several percent of African-Americans thought slavery was a good thing.

Slavery gets shit done.

Best feat in engineering are the Pyramids, all thanks to slave labour.

Don't be silly, that was extra-terrestrials!

Pyramids are anyway shit. And hardly feats of engineering at all. There's a reason nobody's bothered building any since the ancient Egyptians - they're pointless, boring and a complete waste of time, space and money.

This is the first polemic against Pyramids I've ever come across. Excellent stuff. Very PB.com.

"A majority of the public think that the UK should bring back the death penalty, with the strongest support among millennials, a poll has found." (£)

https://www.thetimes.com/uk/law/article/majority-britons-support-death-penalty-poll-scw7glncg

If you go back to the second world war, public support for the death penalty has been pretty consistently above 50%, with dips below whenever there are obvious miscarriages of justice. Imagine if we'd hanged the Guilford Four, for example.

Just imagine if we'd hanged the people who commited these murders:

https://www.telegraph.co.uk/news/2024/06/25/one-murder-a-week-committed-by-offenders-probation-service/

More than 750 killings since 2010 carried out by criminals on probation

Unless I am misunderstanding you mean we should have hanged them for the initial offence so they wouldn't have committed the murders on probation? Nearly all were on probation for offenses other than murder when they committed the murders - only 20 were out on licence having served the minimum custodial element for life sentences. So I think you're suggesting we apply the death penalty pre-emptively for less serious offences, unless you meant something else, which is quite the step.

The Trump ban on federal employee WFH and the hiring freeze may have looked smart on paper but in my little corner of the world it is going to cause a huge amount of damage.

Around 95% of US Patent and Trademark Office staff, including examiners and judicial personnel, work remotely. All are highly skilled, highly qualified and highly coveted. They have all just been told they have to return to the office. The problem is (1) the office is not big enough (it can house 25% of staff max); (2) most staff do not live within commutable distance anyway; and (3) they can al move to other jobs pretty easily.

So, the upshot is that the backlog of examinations is likely to grow very quickly, meaning US companies that want patents are going to have to wait far longer to get them, while disputes about grants will also take much longer to resolve. The impact on smaller businesses looking for investment will be significant and hugely negative.

On growth, Labour lost the 'benefit of the doubt' with their utterly inept first six months.

What are they proposing? Exactly what you'd expect from them - absolutely nothing new that hasn't been discussed for years, or isn't already happening.

Lots of new reservoirs - many of these have been in the pipeline for years and are at various planning stages. Oxford to Cambridge - years of talking. New runways - decades. Of course, many Labour MPs (including Starmer) have been at the heart of stopping all of these projects over the years.

When they had the actual chance to do something, like with tech and AI, they stopped the investment because of politics, Sunak proposed it.

Let's also not forget that the budget (and Rayner's crap) itself will have increased the cost for all of these growth potentials.

More evidence that they came into power, after 14 years away, without a single original thought or policy.

The contrast with Trump is incredible, and not in a good way for Labour. Trump came in ready from day one minute one, with a detailed plan of what we he was gonna do from the very get go. And wow, he's doing it. Even if you despise him and his brillaint ideas, he's enacting them with ruthless speed and brutal efficiency

Labour look like they accidentally wandered in to power, and then started browsing the shelves to see if there are any scotch eggs

THEY HAD FOURTEEN YEARS TO PREPARE

Well Labour did present themselves as a govt in waiting, ready to go for the start. Obviously they weren't and many people, myself included, were mugged off by them on that. However I think they can turn it around as plenty of their former voters are DK/WNV rather than straight switchers.

Irrespective of what people think of Trump he has clearly hit the ground running and has an agenda and is implementing it. A few upset liberals, like the crying actress Selena Gomez in a now deleted video, won't bother them a bit either. Trump has a mandate and is on with it.

Labours problem was the ming vase approach. Ruling out stuff they really need to do such as the triple lock being reformed. Trump, OTOH, said what he would do rather than what he wouldn't.

Labour have now handily provided us with a metric by which to judge them. The third runway at Heathrow. It may be spurious or wrong-headed, but they've come straight out and said "We desperately need growth, this will provide that growth, we are going to do it". Presumably they are going io legislate to remove all remaining LHR3 obstacles, legal and otherwise, they certainly have a big enough majority to do this

So, if we see shovels at work near Hounslow in the next two years we will know they are serious. If it doesn't happen, then we know they are pathetic liars. My bet is on the second, I sincerely hope they surprise me

I have no doubt their intentions are good and their delivery will be mired by legal campaigns like the one from the crank I posted a twitter thread about the other day who stymies any development with legal objections.

But they have a big enough majority to smash through any objections. They've got 400 MPs FFS. We've also had endless inquiries and endless surveys and no more needs to be done, on that front

This is why it is such a good test of their real intent. There is nothing stopping them saying Action This Day - and seeing it done. They have the power to force this through. I'm not remotely optimistic but I am prepared to give them this one last chance

"Trump came in ready from day one minute one, with a detailed plan"

A plan he repeatedly denied had anything to do with him or his policies during the actual campaign.

As i said, that's not the point

The fact is he had two or three years to prepare, and boy did he and they prepare. So it shows it can be done, in a democracy. Labour had fourteen years to be introspective, then get over it, then have some ideas, then turn these ideas into policy, then map out a grid for how these policies would be enacted in the first six months of government, thereby energising the country and providing hope for all

Instead, their plan seems to have been - "moan a lot about the Tories and make sure we all get some free shit". Literally, that was their entire plan for government. That was their big idea, after fourteen fucking years of opposition

I think many of them genuinely thought that the ills of Britain were caused by the fact that the government were Tories, and all they had to do was not be Tories.

"A majority of the public think that the UK should bring back the death penalty, with the strongest support among millennials, a poll has found." (£)

https://www.thetimes.com/uk/law/article/majority-britons-support-death-penalty-poll-scw7glncg

God, youth of today.

One in 20 members of the public even backed using capital punishment against shoplifters.

That's the didn't read, lobotomised, wind-up artist, or nutter demographic, surely?

I recall one where several percent of African-Americans thought slavery was a good thing.

Slavery gets shit done.

Best feat in engineering are the Pyramids, all thanks to slave labour.

So Pharaoh Tut standing behind a board with "Kickstart economic growth" neatly written in hieroglyphs, declared "let's build a pyramid!"

That wasn't real growth, it was just a pyramid scheme.