Best Of

What nonsensical drivel from Truss. Presumably she has simply seen how her like-minded Americans are grifting away and wants a piece of the action?

Anyhow, in happier news, the sun just set has sunk below the horizon at its earliest time of the year, tonight. From tomorrow, if extremely slowly at first, we are headed back towards lighter evenings!

Not in the UK we are not, 22nd December is the shortest day

The earliest sunset is a couple of weeks before the latest sunrise. One of those oddities.

The earth's orbit is slightly ovoid, not circular, and the earth moves quicker around the sun when we're in the closest parts of the orbit, in December (and June). Hence this month the earth is moving slightly more than 1/365th around its orbit each day, and so the 'real' astronomical day length during December is some seconds longer than 24 hours (the extra time needed for the earth to spin back around to the same position relative to the sun as it was yesterday). Because our clocks are set to a fixed 24 hours, this means that both sunrise and sunset occur some seconds later, by our clock time, each day during December than the day before (similarly in June, and some seconds earlier each day in March and September). Normally these small changes are swamped by the daily change as we move through the seasons, but when - as now - the daily change due to the seasons has almost stalled, the change due to the orbit is the greater, advancing earliest sunset (by our clocks) to mid-December and pushing latest sunrise back to the end of the month.

"Election Maps UK
@ElectionMapsUK

Westminster Voting Intention:

RFM: 31% (=)
LAB: 20% (-1)
CON: 18% (+1)
LDM: 13% (+2)
GRN: 12% (-1)
SNP: 3% (=)

Via @OpiniumResearch, 10-12 Dec
Changes w/ 26-28 Nov."

https://x.com/ElectionMapsUK/status/1999936388335300724

This is the problem Tory MPs are having.

Kemi Badenoch and her allies are pointing our her improving ratings yet the Tories are doing worse than 2024 (which was their worst general election defeat ever).

She was an insane choice given the situation the tories found themselves in after the GE.

She was the sane choice when the alternative was Robert Jenrick.

Ukraine is not joining the EU on 1 Jan 2027.

As Dura Ace points out, it’s corrupt as fuck, poorer than any accession nation before it, and raises fundamental and not quickly answerable questions about freedom of movement, agricultural and regional development policy, and voting weight.

The case for its economic integration into a broader European common market, however, is very strong.
It would be in everyone’s best interests - including Britain’s - that it join an “outer European ring”; a reinvigorated EFTA.

I don't think it's in the UK's interest to be a rule taker. It's probably better to rejoin than be in the EEA or EFTA, there are too many disadvantages to being a rule taker when fundamentally hostile countries like France are in charge of the rules. The latest skirmish over the defence fund and the French asking for £6bn per year to bid on £150bn if contracts shows that they're not interested in friendly cooperation so being a rule taker is a huge risk. There's nothing stopping them from simply singling out the UK when drawing up new regulations that put us at a disadvantage and as EEA members we just have to live with it.

No, the solution is to make this work and get to grips that our relationship with the EU is now purely transactional. If we're putting £20bn of defence funding in to secure the European border against Russia then we need to extract £20bn worth of concessions on trade elsewhere. The EU has been working on this basis and I think it's probably about time our politicians got real and did it too.

Why on earth would we want to give £20bn into a European defence fund? Piss off. That money should be used to defend our own Islands.

If we learnt anything in the 20th century it is that the best way to successfully defend yourself is to keep the actual fight as far away from you as possible.

Ukraine is not joining the EU on 1 Jan 2027.

As Dura Ace points out, it’s corrupt as fuck, poorer than any accession nation before it, and raises fundamental and not quickly answerable questions about freedom of movement, agricultural and regional development policy, and voting weight.

The case for its economic integration into a broader European common market, however, is very strong.
It would be in everyone’s best interests - including Britain’s - that it join an “outer European ring”; a reinvigorated EFTA.

I don't think it's in the UK's interest to be a rule taker. It's probably better to rejoin than be in the EEA or EFTA, there are too many disadvantages to being a rule taker when fundamentally hostile countries like France are in charge of the rules. The latest skirmish over the defence fund and the French asking for £6bn per year to bid on £150bn if contracts shows that they're not interested in friendly cooperation so being a rule taker is a huge risk. There's nothing stopping them from simply singling out the UK when drawing up new regulations that put us at a disadvantage and as EEA members we just have to live with it.

No, the solution is to make this work and get to grips that our relationship with the EU is now purely transactional. If we're putting £20bn of defence funding in to secure the European border against Russia then we need to extract £20bn worth of concessions on trade elsewhere. The EU has been working on this basis and I think it's probably about time our politicians got real and did it too.