Best Of

WRT Adolescence: that show has rightly got a lot of people talking*.

But the extremes of radicalisation through social media are only part of the story. I've just got out of a meeting between a Y11 boy and Mum - he is on course to fail GCSE maths and this is a last ditch attempt to get him to commit to actually revising when he says he will, rather than posting on Snapchat and watching Netflix.

We can all insert the usual caveats about feckless teenagers and overly permissive parents, and those caveats all hold in this case.

But how in holy hell have we got to the point where we think it is appropriate or sensible to put a highly addictive technology in the pockets of pre-frontal-cortex-deficient teenagers, where their attention is quite literally the product on offer to the most rapacious bidder, just at the point when their whole future success depends on them putting their attention into a fundamentally less immediately gratifying pursuit such as revising?

Why am I as a teacher being asked to compete with that? Why is this boy's mum being asked to get into constant conflict with him to ask him to overcome an addictive draw on his limited attention? In what possible world do we think this is in any way sensible?

Alright this boy isn't going to go and stab someone. But he is going to mess his life up. And we're greasing that slippery slope for him.

*Although I have some beef with episode 2 - the shambles of a school makes for good TV but is not representative.

More Trump impacts.

Most Scots want to keep UK’s nuclear deterrent, poll shows

Support to retain the Clyde-based weapons is even strong among supporters of the SNP, which wants unilateral disarmament

A majority of Scots believe that Britain should keep its nuclear arsenal amid calls for the SNP to reconsider its historic demand for unilateral disarmament.

A poll has found that 56 per cent believe the UK should retain its independent nuclear deterrent, compared with 22 per cent who think it should be given up.

The SNP has long campaigned for Britain to unconditionally relinquish its Trident nuclear submarines, which are based on the Clyde (the Royal Navy’s headquarters in Scotland), arguing that they are both financially and morally wrong.

However, Ian Blackford, the party’s former Westminster leader, recently became the first senior nationalist to break ranks, citing Russian aggression and uncertainty over President Trump’s commitment to European defence.

https://www.thetimes.com/uk/scotland/article/scottish-people-back-nuclear-deterrent-uk-snp-7kjm7kp2s

That just shows Blackford for an utter retard. Keeping a nuclear deterrent that's dependent on US whims is absolutely the opposite of what anyone worried about Trump would propose.

I'm not sure about that. I've become a convert to nuclear weapons and would like to see some of the more oppressed nations get hold of them. Would Gaza have suffered the slaughter of 50,000 of their citizens if they had had one?

Yes, as Hamas nuke Jerusalem and Tel Aviv with no understanding of the mushroom cloud that is about to engulf them. Other than that, good idea.

Best thing Reeves could do for the UK during the Spring statement is to announce that the UK is to enter negotiations with the EU with the aim of rejoining the single market.

Brexit has been an utter failure: not even it’s most ardent boosters can find anything positive to say about it: it’s a self-inflicted wound that we no longer have the luxury of pretending we can afford. It’s time to rejoin.

You really think that now is the time to divide the country and distract our government / Europe with intense negotiations?

Really? I mean really, really?

Yes, really. It would set a positive direction of travel for the economy, confirming that the government is serious about achieving economic growth.

Who cares if a few Brexiteer cry-babies don’t like it? They’ve had their chance to make Brexit work & failed utterly. The US is no longer a reliably partner - the best thing we can do for the UK economy is to cosy up as close as possible to the EU by minimising trade barriers. If we can get services / finance on a equivalency basis then so much the better.

The government doesn’t have bandwidth right now. You need to stop litigating the past

It's obvious though that the quickest spur to growth would be rejoining the SM.


It's only the anti-growth coalition that cannot see that.

And the fundamental difference remains:

People like you, who like the politics, present it as an economic argument

People who view it as primarily a political project that isn’t right for the UK don’t care about the economics.

Yes, growth would be faster if we were in the single market. But it’s not worth the freedoms and flexibility that we would give up

That wasn't what Leave promised. They would have lost if they had gone with that tagine.

There is a simple option to spur growth and fix the national finances, it's just not one that the Blimps like.

What Labour are delivering on the economy isn't what they promised, but that doesn't invalidate the election.

Joining the SM doesn't invalidate the Brexit vote either. It's perfectly compatible, indeed promised by some Leave campaigners.

It's clear though that many here prize their flagshagging to economic growth and closer relations with reliable allies.

The Brexit vote is null now anyway. The mandate from it expired as soon as we left. You can't hold an electorate hostage to a decision taken in the past if the will is there to change it. Labour campaigned to leave the EEC in 1983 despite the 1975 vote; we're already past the equivalent point now post-2016.

I wonder if we could see Con/Ref battling it out for the lead and Lab/Lib crossover after Reeves' statement tomorrow?

When it becomes a Con/Ref race, a lot of decent centrists will have to swing behind Badenoch to stop Farage.

No way. They are as bad as each other and likely to be in coalition.

I wouldn't touch either with a bargepole.

Even more decent centrists will swing behind the LibDems. As will Lab voters where their candidate will running third.

Perhaps Election 2029 will result the first Liberal majority government since 1906?

I'll be 91 that year. Gives me a target to keep going for!

We all hope you do!