Best Of

Golf is so fricking ridic

It's been a wonderful weekend watching it. Love it. Bets going well too.

Not trying to spoil your fun! Golf can be very entertaining, and the Ryder Cup is probably the most absorbing form of it, because of the varied competititons - foursomes, Swissnicks - and also the genuine niggle between the teams

It's just that when I watch golf, and before I get into it again, I get a sense of what non-sports-fans feel "this is so absurd, grown men chasing after spherical objects. I never get that with football, rugby, cricket, tennis etc

Part of it is the absurd costumes and shoes and all that

@Leon Tips for Bangkok please - we are off in November - staying very near Lumpini Park, then going up to Chang Mai then back to Bangkok riverside. Me and Mrs Stocky, up for fun but not too depraved.

Last time I went to Bangkok I met these two beautiful women, they told me sex with them was like winning the lottery, they were right, we had six matching balls.

Meanwhile, topically in Switzerland:

A referendum in Switzerland to decide whether to introduce electronic identity cards is taking place, with initial projections suggesting voters are evenly split.

It is the second nationwide ballot on the issue, after the idea was rejected in 2021 over data protection concerns and unease over the proposed system being largely run by private firms.

Under the revised proposal, the new system would remain entirely optional and in public hands, with data stored on users' smartphones rather than centrally.

Interesting and the word optional is the key difference between Starmer mandating them [I expect the idea will be quietly dropped in the fullness of time]

Here is what the government has said about its plans so far;

https://www.gov.uk/government/publications/digital-id-scheme-explainer/digital-id-scheme-explainer

Of course there will be some spin here. But it's a very long way from the proposal to the scheme that people are filling a petition out against. As far as I can tell from the government explainer, the only situation where it will be essential is for people taking up new jobs. In theory, those checks should already be happening, and they are a bit of a pain, as @eek has pointed out.

The problem with that is mission creep and I really do not expect it to become law

Next time I’m in Llandudno - I will take you to a council estate where I can guarantee 50% won’t have the passport required to meet the employment requirement of a national firm.

But hey you are more concerned about x then making it possible to get a job.

Worse the database is going to be implemented anyway so let’s give people the small benefits that can be derived from it

Which takes us back to how warped and unhinged the national conversation is.

The way to think about this plan is using technology to make life easier for citizens. Whenever you move house, change jobs, do significant financial transactions or vote in person, you have to prove your identity. At the monent, that involves various degrees of clunkiness- it's not too bad if you have a passport and/or driving licence, but plenty of people don't. (And even then, the paper bank statement/utility bills thing is getting tricky.) Having a thing that you can show that proves who you are and not much else is the sort of incremental improvement that makes everyone's lives a bit better and makes the national administration a bit smoother that governments ought to be doing.

We can't talk about it that way, because all the media want to ask about is the alleged migration crisis. This will probably help a bit there (at the moment, ID checks are more faff than they are worth for microbusinesses, and more faff than they are worth to investigate for the government... streamlining the process should help), but they aren't the real benefit.

So yeah, it's probably fine, and a lot of the shroud-waving about tech conspiracies is misdirected. But some people have such an intense Starmer hatred that anything he proposes must be evil.

Which isn't to say that I wouldn't rather someone better was doing the job. But PM isn't really the sort of role where you can run a recruitment process and decide not to appoint.

It's fortunate that I'm not looking for work as I have neither a driving licence or a valid passport. All I have is an OAP bus pass, with a 20+ year old photo!

I'm impressed you could get an OAP bus pass at 20+. Most people have to wait until 60.

Is there some significant psychological barrier crossed when the Tories come fifth? Surely fourth would be bad enough

Anyway I love these polls. A plague on both their houses

Yes, right now some Tories have been able to argue that being third in the polls is due to Starmer being rubbish and boosting Reform, but ending up consistently fourth/fifth behind the Greens/Lib Dems will be a barrier crossed.

I agree, I was just querying that distinction twixt 4th and
5th

This feels like a death spiral now, for the Tories. As you say there’s a tipping point when they look terminally irrelevant and any vote for them is wasted. They are horribly close to that point, and it’s not obvious how they reverse the slide. Dumping poor Kemi is necessary - but not sufficient

Labour have different problems. Unlikely to go extinct but facing a defeat so bad they are out of power for 15 years

Perhaps.

I am writing a piece which should go up later on this week which points out based on the MRPs/polls Reform are on course to win the election with a lower vote share/votes than Labour in 2024 (the YouGov MRP had them on 27%) and we saw how unpopular Labour became.

I reckon within a year of the next election Reform could be in the single digits and we end up with a very left wing party leading the polls such as the Greens.

The Uber drivers in LA bully the Waymo cars mercilessly. They know they will always brake / reverse / etc.

The Waymo software needs a BMW driver upgrade.

That reminds me of a story I read recently.

A Day in the Diary of a BMW Driver

"The other day I was cruising along as usual coming out of Inverness onto my A9 , which was very busy with inferior cars. First off, I couldn't believe that the volume of traffic DIDN'T slow down for me AT ALL as I came off the slip road! I had to squeeze into a barely big enough gap between two cars in order to get onto my Dual carriageway!
The driver of the car behind me did realise his mistake though and honked an apology to me with a long blast of his horn. Unbelievably, I had to do the same again before I could get to the BMW lane. Anyway, once I was in the BMW lane and posing along at 110 mph enjoying the adulation that the inferior car drivers were giving me, I noticed an inferior car ahead of me which was not only in the BMW lane of my A9, but was driving at a ridiculous 70 mph! Naturally, I got within a foot or so of his rear bumper and flashed my headlights to remind him he shouldn't be in the BMW lane of my A9 and to get out of my way.
Of course, once he realised it was a BMW behind him, he did just that, but I could hardly believe it when he pulled straight back in behind me! He also tried to keep up with me and when he realised I would out-run him, he put on some blue lights in his front grill and urged me to get onto the hard shoulder so that he could congratulate me on my excellent car.
Needless to say, I was eager to oblige and when we had stopped, the man gave me a piece of paper confirming what I already knew - that my car goes fast! Apparently he wants everyone to know what a superior car I have, so I had to take my driver’s licence to a police station to be sent away to have some points put on! (They're not free points either - they're £20 each and I was only allowed 3.) But the man at the Police station said that because I drive a BMW, it won't be much longer before I earn the full 12 points, and then I won't even NEED a driving licence, so they will take it off me! See... now THAT'S the sort of respect you get when you own and drive a BMW! "

Is there some significant psychological barrier crossed when the Tories come fifth? Surely fourth would be bad enough

Anyway I love these polls. A plague on both their houses

Yes, right now some Tories have been able to argue that being third in the polls is due to Starmer being rubbish and boosting Reform, but ending up consistently fourth/fifth behind the Greens/Lib Dems will be a barrier crossed.

I agree, I was just querying that distinction twixt 4th and
5th

This feels like a death spiral now, for the Tories. As you say there’s a tipping point when they look terminally irrelevant and any vote for them is wasted. They are horribly close to that point, and it’s not obvious how they reverse the slide. Dumping poor Kemi is necessary - but not sufficient

Labour have different problems. Unlikely to go extinct but facing a defeat so bad they are out of power for 15 years

Perhaps.

I am writing a piece which should go up later on this week which points out based on the MRPs/polls Reform are on course to win the election with a lower vote share/votes than Labour in 2024 (The YouGov MRP had them on 27%) and we saw how unpopular Labour became.

I reckon within a year of the next election Reform could be in the single digits and we end up with a very left wing party leading the polls such as the Greens.

That’s the consensus prediction at Knapper’s Gazette, interestingly

Reform win, fuck it all up, and the NEXT government is far left

It is quite possible, especially as by then we may need UBI

We are in a hi-tech rehash of the 1930s

Utter tripe. No doubt come from Gove, a bitter political failure who cannot conceive of anyone not as spineless as he was.

Speaking of which, a hideous ad banner has appeared which they graciously take off when you log in. It's very tacky.

I have sympathy for Reform, combined with scepticism. It's hard to believe that a party can go from 5 MPs to 350, in one go, without electing some pretty awful people, and/or people who are utterly clueless. Such a result could end up doing great damage to the Right.

I would far rather see Reform move to being official Opposition than government, next time.

Gove had his chance. The things that annoyed Conservatives about new Labour (woke, defence, justice, immigration), got worse on Gove's watch.

The Conservatives essentially accepted New Labour's socio-cultural consensus, and just wanted slightly lower taxes. Feather-bedding their core vote to stay in office did the rest.

That explains 90% of their problems.

Is there some significant psychological barrier crossed when the Tories come fifth? Surely fourth would be bad enough

Anyway I love these polls. A plague on both their houses

Yes, right now some Tories have been able to argue that being third in the polls is due to Starmer being rubbish and boosting Reform, but ending up consistently fourth/fifth behind the Greens/Lib Dems will be a barrier crossed.

And people don't like to be seen backing a loser.

Yup, we'll end up with a donors' strike, that'll end Kemi's leadership.

I am almost regretting vote for her.

A fie on the parliamentary Tory Party for giving me a choice between Badenoch and Jenrick.

Just disband the party. It’s over. Nothing is forever. Soft dads like you can join the LDs - and improve their offering - and harder types can join Reform, giving them gravitas

Win win

The next election should ideally be LDs versus Reform. That would be a good clear choice for the people. The two big parties need to go extinct now