Best Of

Funny how Reform voters are so interested in the rather opaque China spying trial collapse, yet completely uninterested in the conviction of a key friend and colleague of Farage for taking bribes to further the interests of Russia.

I wonder why.

Why don't you ask the Westminster Lobby or the UK wide news channels why that is the case, its been a serious problem now since devolution. There has been numerous political scandals in Scotland, Wales and NI for the last twenty five years and they simple do not get reported or forensically scrutinised by the London media. In fact a case in point, Nicola Sturgeon's actual record as FM in Scotland is absolutely terrible, she launched a ferry with no windows or funnels in 2017, it never saw service for another eight years and should never have been launched when it was for that big Sturgeon headline on the Scottish news. But the London media fawned over her and believed the huge spad driven narrative without so much as doing the most basic homework of scraping below the surface. The endless list of SNP government scandals would have ended a Westminster government years ago. And as for the Labour run Welsh government, ditto!

So poor is the UK wide coverage of the devolved areas in the UK and the poor governance or scandals I once watched an episode of Question Time where an audience member in Wales ranted about the Westminster government's poor running of NHS Wales when they had not been in charge of it for years! It was embarrassing and it should have been a huge wake up call to the UK media, but it wasn't. So excuse me if I am not in the least surprised that the conviction of a key friend and colleague of Farage in Wales for taking bribes to further the interests of Russia has been of any more interest to Reform voters UK wide than any of the rest of the UK electorate who support other parties. And that is because they have probable not even heard about it thanks to the lack of UK wide reporting while the scandal of the Westminster China Spying trial is making the frontpages UK wide.

To be fair to Newsnight, they did run a story a few years back about the ferries scandal in Scotland, but who was watching apart from political anoraks like me? I will go one better, why not ask Reform, Conservative, Labour, Libdem or any other voters on the mainland UK how many of them knew that there was no functioning devolved government at Stormont for three years? You get my point, if the UK media doesn't ever bother to scrutinise or report news from devolved areas in the way they do Westminster, don't bother trying to blame the ordinary voters from parties you don't like for not being aware of it. And I say this as a frustrated member of the Scottish Conservatives who are currently being hammered in the polls here by a faceless Scottish Reform party with no discernable leadership or policies while my party has been the most effective Opposition to the SNP and thankfully saw off the terrible GRR bill and its awful implications for women in Scotland!

a

If we get on the wrong side of China, they might stop selling us tat that we don't need.

What am I missing here?

It’s worse than that.

Their plan is to stop selling us things that we might really need, such as EV batteries, so they can instead sell us their cars by denying European and American manufacturers the batteries - because Europe and America don’t have the technology to produce the new improved batteries the Chinese are now making.

This is why Trump is talking about 100% tariffs on China, and other Western nations face the same dilemma.

There is of course a way forward - develop and manufacture batteries in the west.

MURICA - Batteries are ANTIFA
UK - Ah, Yes, Brugh, BRITVOLT, er, right, oh
EU - we want to make profit from the engines we already make

Electrification is here and it can't be stopped. What the rage baiters foaming on about EVs don't get is that most people don't care that much about cars. Offer them a new one thats easier to drive cheaper to maintain and more reliable and they'll take it. And they are, with EV sales continuing to rise.

ICE is on its way out, and China will rule the world unless the west wakes up and starts investing serious money.

And a reminder

1) A speech about building batteries isn’t building batteries.
2) A report on building batteries isn’t building batteries.
3) A policy on building batteries isn’t building batteries.

Building fuck off gigantic factories building batteries *is* building batteries.

And solar panels. Of all the stupid things the Reform clowns want to do, switch off renewables is top of the heap. We will end up having to reverse course some years later and be so far behind that we will always then be reliant on other countries.

We have abundant renewable sources, with so much energy flowing that we have to pay the companies to dump it as we can't transmit it and we can't consume it quickly enough. The obvious solution is better transmission - needed anyway as so little money has been spent by the private sector - and battery storage. And not just at big sites - local generation and storage.

But no, the fukers want to shut the whole thing down, import more LNG and then we're fine apparently. Asshats the lot of them, whether they turn up to selection meetings in union jack shorts or not.

The Kobeissi Letter
@KobeissiLetter
·
18m
BREAKING: President Trump is considering sending National Guard troops to San Francisco as a part of his "crime crackdown."

Too late. Leon's already left.

The administration is out of control, and appears to be trying to foment rebellion.

The Trump administration has frozen or cut $27 billion in funding in Democrat districts, compared to $739 million in Republican districts. There are open abuses of power occurring daily that would’ve been unthinkable under any other administration.
https://x.com/RichardHanania/status/1978458214397001835

If the Administration seems out of control, that's because all the mechanisms that ought to control them are failing. Mostly by self-immolation.

It's getting to the point where Michael York's line from Tomorrow Belongs To Me doesn't even work as a rhetorical question.

The smug section about "Checks and Balances" in every US politics textbook is going to need some revision.

Be interested to know how a Waymo would distinguish a set of classic temporary roadworks traffic lights that aren't working/stuck on red versus a very long hold but functionally operational 4-way type set of lights.

Control of the Waymo gets passed to a man in a warehouse if they get stuck. It's one of the features they have that the Teslas do not.

Could they use the same technology (control by a man in a warehouse) for lorry deliveries? Would be a lot nicer job sitting in a warehouse driving and going home at the end of shift rather than sleeping in the cab in some lorry park. Could have the Lorries driving for longer too as you just swap out the warehouse driver after mandatory hours reached.

Please hold, your call is important to us.

Hope they always have enough warehouse staff.

The way that Waymo worked in each area they expanded into was -

1) Try out the vehicles with drivers
2) When they had logged enough miles/per driver intervention, the remote option was used.
3) As they logged less and less remote interventions, they increased the number of cars.
4) When the number of interventions was low enough, they launched the service.

That's how they achieved their safety record

Has Keir tried blaming Farage for Chinagate yet?

Sir 'I'll double check that' had a ghastly PMQs and Her Britannic Majesty Kemi has well and truly got the measure of him these days. She doesn't let up any more.

Eye of the beholder:

https://www.theguardian.com/politics/2025/oct/15/kemi-brings-a-shovel-to-a-gunfight-and-starmer-lets-her-dig-her-own-hole

I find John Crace rather dull and predictable which tends to make him rather less amusing than he possibly think he is.

Not a patch on Marina Hyde who can genuinely be funny, as well as spiky and original, and quite often insightful. Her take on Trump is well worth a read:

https://www.theguardian.com/commentisfree/2025/oct/14/donald-trump-taylor-swift-peace-deal-star

I think she captures what many political commentators miss. Trump has never really progressed from being a Celeb. That's the best way of understanding him.