Best Of

Kemi's speech - bloody brilliant.

I just watched it. Was certainly well-delivered and she seemed entirely at ease: a good sign as temperament is incredibly important in a role like that.

I keep going backwards and forwards with Kemi. She has become leader too early, perhaps fatally so, like Hague. And yet, the talent is there, and maybe a sprinkling of stardust. But the ogre of May 2026 lies in wait. I wish her luck as she could well be a good thing.

I thought the speech utterly incoherent. Actually worse than Liz Truss. The difference of course was that Truss was Prime Minister and important, while Badenoch fortunately is irrelevant.

You OK hun?

Not really politically speaking but Badenoch's dismal Conference speech has nothing to do with that. Half her speech was platitudes and insults against the other parties - mainly Labour even though Labour isn't at all the driver for the Conservatives' 16% standing in the polls. But fair enough, if a party leader can't serve platitudes and insult the other parties in a conference speech, when can they?

The other half is the problem. So she says:

[Young people] feel they are living somewhere where things never get any better. Britain is stagnating, while the world around us moves on. We are competing with restless and ambitious countries around the world. We are competing with a billion people in India striving to become middle class. We are competing with economic success stories like Poland. 15 years ago, Polish workers came here to find opportunity. Now, Poland is growing twice as fast as we are. While Britain was redefining what a woman is, China was building five nuclear reactors.

On whose watch did this happen and why? Does she think that happened entirely in the last 14 months? Actually from the rest of the speech it appears she does. But not the slightest hint of the "bold ideas", "positive vision for this country" and "plan to deliver it" in her speech.

A public sector which already every year, demands more and more and more of our money, yet services don’t get better, they get worse.

Why does she think this is? (I have a good idea and interestingly I don't think it's mainly the previous government's fault). Her solution for collapsing public services is to spend less money on them.

Her "fully costed savings" that offset uncosted tax cuts

All the Lou Grade ITC dramas, most notably the colour episodes of the Saint, the Avengers (I still have a thing for Linda Thorson) the Champions, the Protectors, Department S, Man In a Suitcase, the Zoo Gang, the Prisoner, the Baron and the Persuaders etc were all very well written and performed. Even if a street in London looked exactly the same as a Street in Monte Carlo. The only series that didn't really work was the Adventurer because Gene Barry couldn't work with any actor who was taller than him, and apparently he was short!

The Verity Lambert, Thames productions like the Sweeney and Minder all stand up to scrutiny too.

Verity Lambert wasn’t involved in The Sweeney

Some of those ITC series had some belting themes too.

Me and my two buddies used to drive around in my old Triumph Acclaim like we were Regan, Carter and Daniel’s fr9 the sweeney.

Happy days. I remember my mate came out of Shirley police station. Rolled over the bonnet for effect . He’d been called in to make peace with a whovian twat he’d upset. And we drove off up the M42 to the wood for some chips

Ace days

It’s a great series.

Here’s a really eye catching policy - that any of the major right wing parties could introduce

Add an extra hour to the day. Take three minutes off each of the other hours (no one will notice) then combine all that into a new hour

And here’s the right wing libertarian angle. Allow people to spend their new hour when they like. ie if you really enjoy early morning you could add your extra Leon-hour between six and seven. An extra hour to get things done while all the world snoozes!

Night owls could prolong the sultry mood at 1am. A Leon-hour of the night

And if you’re simply knackered just get an extra Leon-hour of sleep

This is what British politics needs. Not tax tweaks. Proper changes

Agree with this.

They also need to add an extra month in the summer, which could easily be created from days taken from months at drearier times of year (it's madness that January has 31 days, for example).

It's be a double whammy - a whole extra month of summer, and less winter grot to wade through.

Ethiopia already has 13 months, so they are way ahead of us.

They are also are only a month into 2018, so have yet to experience Covid.

...

The question is whether Jenrick is “racist” is not illuminating. Yet, whether something or someone is “racist” consumes a massive amount of media attention and focus in 2025.

No, what is relevant is that Jenrick’s comments - taken out of context or not - were offensive.

God only knows how I’d feel if I was a brown migrant or perhaps even just brown, in the UK today. I would not be feeling very welcome, and I would also be feeling that the next Tory leader is stoking racial enmity for partisan advantage.

Jenrick should apologize, but he hasn’t and he won’t.
He’s beyond the pale.

There is a trend on the right to stop apologising - see also Truss's refusal to disassociate herself from Tommy Robinson. Liz Truss isn't a supporter of Tommy Robinson, but she refused to give any ground on it because she did not want to continue what she sees as the left being given the right to pronounce on what is right and decent, and what, as you say, is 'beyond the pale'.

If someone wants the right to pronounce on what is 'right and decent', I might suggest they start by not associating herself with criminal neo-Nazi thugs.

Truss is not setting herself up as the pronouncer of what is right and decent - she is refusing to submit to what is effectively a left-wing derived rulebook of modern manners.

Don't be a nitwit. You don't need to be left-wing to criticise Tommy Robinson.

She is making the same mistake as Enoch Powell who refused to give any ground to his critics even when the criticism was justified. The latest episode of The Rest is History is very good on this and how his utter refusal to show or express any empathy for those harmed by his words, even in the face of clear evidence of such harm, damned him even more. He didn't simply make criticisms. He deliberately used inflammatory language and then tried to claim the consequences of his choice of words had nothing to do with him.

This is irresponsible dangerous politics. It is as bad as those marchers shouting Arab slogans from the 8th century about killing Jews and then pretending this has nothing to do with creating a climate of fear.

Tory politicians should not be behaving like this.

Excellent announcement from Kemi that a Conservative government would abolish Stamp Duty

SDLT raised
23-34 £11.6bn
22-23 £15.4bn

I don't disagree that Stamp Duty has negative effects on the housing market and mobility, but how will the tax be raised instead?

How bout cutting spending 👍

We, like most of Europe, have a choice -

• Raise taxes on a dwindling workforce,
  
• Cut benefits to politically powerful older voters,
  
• Or borrow more, which is becoming harder and more expensive.
  

France has attempted all three in recent years. We (via Truss) attempted the last one. In all cases it hasn't gone well.

We could also import younger people of working age, of course #starttheboats.

And that has led to…. Not much difference in economic output.

What we need is productivity increases. Which come from mechanisation and streamlining processes.

For example, my Aunt was trying to escape from hospital. The doctors, the various care units in the hospital and the external support for elderly people were unable, apparently, to talk to each other about simple things.

I ended up sketching, in my head, a simple collaboration portal - on a per case basis. So all the concerned parties could at least talk to each other. Instead of a game of telephone tag….

The Discord / Zendesk hack from the other day just took a bad turn.

The hackers have 1.5TB of photos, 2.2m photos, related to age verification, and are using it for extorting Discord.

That’ll be 2.2m photos of passports, driving licences, national ID cards…

https://x.com/vxunderground/status/1975834621503062495

And, thanks to the OSA, they'll be disproportionately British...

Heads should roll at Ofcom. Their implementation of the OSA was almost guaranteed to lead to such issues. It's insane that we've basically switched from 20 years of telling people "don't give out Personally Identifiable Information on the internet" to "give out PII to anyone from anywhere who asks for it, to prove your age."