Best Of

Just bumped off a full plane at Heathrow. First time that’s happened in many years

I hope you managed to secure plenty of freebies.

They are grovelling. Offering new flight, compo, free biz class return, free hotel when I arrive

I don’t really care. The most annoying thing is that I got up at 5am for this fecking flight and now I won’t fly until 3pm

AAAAAAARGH

Unlucky! The one time I was nearly bumped they offered me a flight in the jump seat (it was that long ago!) and I had a brilliant ride into Heathrow!

What is a “jump seat”??

It's extra fold out seat in the cockpit.

I doubt they ever offer that to anybody these days given terrorism concerns.

I got to go in the cockpit of a Virgin Atlantic 747 at 38,000 feet on 12 August 2001. Reckon I was one of the last to have that pleasure.

More innocent times...

As a teenager in the 1950s, I was invited into the signal box at Scremerston (just outside Berwick) and allowed to signal the actual 'Flying Scotsman' steam engine through on it's way to Edinburgh

I didn't realise just how much effort was required to pull the levers

It is a lifetime memory unavailable these days

Lawyers, particularly court lawyers, have a lot of relevant skills for politics. They are trained to construct an argument and defend it from criticism. They learn how to speak in public. The better ones learn how to be persuasive and to think on their feet. They learn how to analyse a subject and pick out the relevant facts.

But none of this can make up for the inevitability that at least some of our number are just shits. Jenrick being a case in point.

The problem comes with a certain type of lawyer. Who believes that The Law is the Goal and The All.

Hence you get lawyers in management who prevent non-lawyers being promoted - because “specialists might get bogged down in the details”

Many years ago, when I worked in an oil company, I used to attend lots of meeting and conferences. I was curious about the workings of the company.

At one meeting, someone gave a proud presentation of how he had cut costs on a new oil field. I noticed that he had substituted regular steel for the well heads, rather than a special steel (pretty much stainless).

I put my hand up, and being stupid, asked.

Yup - he hadn’t checked. The reason for the original special spec was that the field had lots of water in the oil, and the oil came out under great pressure and very hot. Regular steel gets eaten by that at a crazy rate. Mm per hour can happen.

If that had gone ahead, multiple blowouts. Probably deaths.

My career survived (my manger protected me quite well, in those days). What was interesting was the reaction of all those around the clown - “he couldn’t be expected to know technical stuff - that’s not his job”.

Everyone in that meeting (apart from me) was a lawyer or accountant.

When Johnson saw Walter Cronkite's damning report from Khe Sanh, he apparently said "if I've lost Cronkite I've just lost middle-America". If Starmer has lost John Rentoul, it really is all over.

https://x.com/dpjhodges/status/1938873634850001395?s=46&t=CW4pL-mMpTqsJXCdjW0Z6Q

When is Starmer going to lose you?

It's quite a puzzle. Starmer's lack of leadership touch and failures would have lost him everyone normally, but all politics is relative. About 60-65% of voters have nowhere else to go that could actually do better or help the cause of grown up politics, except those in the 100 or so seats where the LDs are the contender. So for the moment Starmer and Labour are the only grown up, non nationalist centrist option in about 530 seats.

It may be over for Starmer (though I am not sure) but it certainly is not all over for Labour.

Of course it isn't and indeed the current situation is a million miles away from where Labour were in the mid-70s where their majority was two or three and the problems were every bit as bad if not worse.

Neither the Conservatives (due to their myriad failures from 2010-24 which were either self-indulgence (the EU) or inertia (social care reform) or Reform, whose biggest asset and problem is Farage, offer anything remotely coherent in terms of a policy response on immigration, the economy, social care or a host of other issues.

Governing ain't easy and it was never going to be easy whoever won last July. The party was over, the bill was on the table and we had to pay up. I do think closing off options to raise income tax and VAT was a mistake by Starmer and Reeves but the shadow of 1992 is long.

If you want Labour to succeed, your best friends are time and patience. The next election will, as they often are, be a war of statistics vs perceptions. Labour will wheel out all manner of statistics about how things have improved on their watch and the Opposition will wheel out their statistics and perceptions to try to prove they haven't.

MY biggest concern is the 40% or so who will probably not vote again - democracy is in trouble if the best we can manage is 60% turnout - I'm not after 90% but we should we looking at 75% turnout. Reform could win as loveless a landslide as Labour on an even lower share of the vote - it wouldn't be called "loveless" of course by the Express or the Mail but we know that's what it would be.

The problem of disengagement with politics and the political process is one of the biggest we face and it won't be solved by changes to electoral system (though they may help) but a thorough ground-up re-engagement with people and understanding what it is they want and expect from all levels of Government.

This seemed a bit odd.

Pro-Palestinian activists reportedly destroy military equipment intended for Ukraine
https://kyivindependent.com/pro-palestinian-activists-destroy-ukrainian-aid-worth-1-million-confusing-it-with-israeli-06-2025/

But makes a lot more sense in the light of this.
https://x.com/HarcourtYthan/status/1938511739059888527
..Palestine action runs on donations, its largest donor and supporter, the man that pays their legal fees and organises actions, is a man called James "fergie" Chambers, wealthy son of the American Cox family.

Chambers is a big fan of Putin's invasion.
https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Fergie_Chambers

During the Cold War, it was standard KGB policy to try and infiltrate any anti-governmental organisation in the West.

Often the method was funding - a Russian agent would join the organisation as a fund raiser. And do so well that he would end up as the chief finance guy - and build a power base controlling the organisation.

This is why, around 1990, large numbers of such orgs collapsed.

The KGB objective was to promote opposition, and where they could, turn such organisations to violence. So in the event of war, sabotage and anti-war protests….

The funny thing about Starmer regretting all his Island of Strangers stuff, the only people really offended by a single phrase in a single speech (that other than that was hardly Nick Griffin giving it the big'un) aren't the people he needs to win over.

All those Red Wall voters who are concerned about immigration now just got further proof he isn't serious about dealing with it.

You don't think he needs to win over/back the Left?
It's a view (one that Team Starmer held and may still hold).

The original speech was to try and target Reform voters.

I think a good chunk of the left will vote for him to stop Reform. I am sure this BS in this interview is trying to show some ankle to them that he isn't really a mini-Nigel. I guess the question is, is it enough? And it plays in to what a lot of Corbyn types have said for a long time, is that he can't be trusted in what he says.

What he means is, "It was supposed to be a dog whistle, but instead the wrong people heard it and started comparing me to Enoch Powell."