Best Of

Good morning

I think Lammy's performance yesterday was a sad reflection on our politics as he ranted and raved at the dispatch box that must have had the victims of this woeful affair watching in despair

Passing the buck, then laughing, gesticulating, and pointing is exactly the reason politics is in the gutter at present

It may delight some but I expect the public turned away in disgust

I understand your reaction, but perhaps you have missed what he is reacting to.

The Tories are pretending that everything happened after they were demolished last year. All Labour. So we now have Coutinho attacking the policies she literally crowed about as SofS for Energy, Jenrick stood outside an asylum hotel he opened as SofS demanding it be closed etc etc etc.

Jenrick says there needs to be an independent enquiry of the kind he never enacted when it happened under his watch. Braverman went one further, huffing and puffing about this release until someone pointed out the Exact Same Thing happened when she was Home Secretary. Badenoch saying "the Tories have a plan to" do all the things they didn't do for 14 years.

So yeah, Lammy got angry, because your party are grifting hypocrites. And its all over social media, elected Tories and their shills posting stuff that just gets laughed at. People aren't stupid, they remember last year, the year zero strategy isn't working. And Jenrick is supposed to be next in line...

So the OBR have knocked £20bn off their budget forecast as the economy isn't seeing the productivity gains they had previously expected

Reeves faces £20bn hit to UK public finances from productivity downgrade

https://www.ft.com/content/0e2de708-f7b5-470d-a716-93eb3b1ac174

I am doing my bit, massive increase in productivity thanks to incorporation of AI into my work flows and 100hr working weeks....am I the only one working in this country?

Productivity is measured as output per hour worked so working 100 hour weeks might decrease productivity not increase it.

Well the only person who knows I work ~100 hours a week is me (and Mrs U), so no it won't.

Yes, most of the rest of us have moved onto 120 hour weeks now.

Well thats the new silicon valley work week, forget 9/9/6, its all about 22/7.

I've always said that I work 24-7.

That's 24 minutes an hour, 7 hours a day.

In terms of productive time, that's not far off.

Farage on Pochin:

"The way she put it, the way she worded it was wrong and was ugly.

If I thought the intention behind it was racist, I would have taken more action than I have taken today."

https://x.com/tomhfh/status/1982815805520679110?s=46&t=CW4pL-mMpTqsJXCdjW0Z6Q

I think its tricky. Its a bit odd when 4% of British people are black that over half of adverts feature black people. But its obvious why - its advertisers selling stuff and optimising who they appeal to.

But we have an issue in this country with Reform and people voting for them. What drives someone to think that the county has far more people from ethnic minority backgrounds than is the case? This is something we know - if you ask people to estimate the proportions that are black, asian etc the norm is to vastly overstate the numbers. Well just maybe having the adverts like this plays a part?

But what realistically would be done, even if you wanted to do something? How would you ensure a set of adverts has the approved ethnic make up? You can't - its stupid to even try.

But maybe all those who wonder why people are pushed to Reform should reflect a bit when people tell them why.

There was a time when an accurate reflection of society was deemed important in works of fiction

A few years ago, Brian True-May was suspended from his job. True-May was the producer of ITV drama "Midsomer Murders", a detective show set in rural England, and his crime was to admit that he didn't use black or Asian people in the series as 'it wouldn't be an English village with them"

The race equality thinktank the Runnymede Trust said True-May's comments were out of date and no longer reflected English society.

"Clearly, as a fictional work, the producers of Midsomer Murders are entitled to their flights of fancy, but to claim that the English village is purely white is no longer true and not a fair reflection of our society, particularly to this show's large international audience," said the trust's director Rob Berkeley. "It is not a major surprise that ethnic minority people choose not to watch a show that excludes them."


https://aboutasfarasdelgados.blogspot.com/2014/11/is-eastenders-more-racist-than.html

I remember this, haven’t seen Midsomer Murders in ages. All got a bit samey.

The people who for years have banged on about diversity and representation and how important it is are suddenly outraged when someone points out where it’s ended with over representation of some demographics. All the confected anger on social media was most tedious.

I suspect Luckyguys take on this was right, and one I concur.

Still, I’m sure we will get more stories along the lines of the countryside is racist, skiing is racist, sailing is racist etc etc etc.

That large parts of the English countryside are like old style Misomer Murders is true. And imagine how jarring it is for them to see a London Ad agencies idea of what Britain looks like. But I don’t think there is anything to actually be done about it, other than perhaps to not give a shit.

The Goodness Gracious Me sketch:

To see the real England you have to go to the countryside. There are people there who have never seen a brown face.

We joke, but…
At my Grammar school in Salisbury there was one black kid out of 600-700. One. Now that was a way back now, but it’s probably not changed that much.

The seventies were a different country...

Absolutely.

Back then, a discredited Labour government, following a deeply unpopular Conservative government, was leading the country to economic stagnation and decline through big state economic mismanagement and the avoidance of hard choices, following an energy crisis, wars and instability in the Middle East and in relations with Russia.

Thank God we've learned and evolved in the past half-century ..