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Anyone else fed up with "scanning a QR-code" and "downloading our app" ?

I'm fed up being obligated to interface with the world around me though my phone.

No, it makes my life so much easier.

It makes my life considerably harder. Particularly if I don't have my phone. Or I do have my phone but it has no battery.

Honestly, the tech of 2007 was entirely fine.

Agreed. Being forced to download apps just to buy something is a complete no-no for me as a basic security issue. (Quite apart from the possibility of the QR code or the website in question being fake, like those put on stickers over car-parking site notice QR codes.)

https://x.com/pippacrerar/status/1997296467195617672

Informal discussions have taken place inside No 10 on rejoining customs union as quickest way to boost growth

We won't rejoin THE Customs Union or THE Single Market... Not yet, anyway. But an arrangement with a Single Customs Area and/or a United Market probably would be good for growth. It will leave the UK people with less control than they had in 2015, but beggars can't be choosers.

And going back to the theme of the header, the next Labour leader won't get the job without showing quite a lot of leg on the matter.

I think it'd add something like 0.2-0.3% GDP to growth, so very marginal in the grand scheme of things.

That's not what this is about nor why he's doing it. He's doing it because VALUES: it'd deftly stimulate the internationalist erogenous zones of left-liberal progressives, and probably give Remoaners a near orgasm.

I'd pledge it, if I were him, in the next GE because there's probably no better way Starmer can harvest their votes.

Better than a kick in the teeth. Using a recent estimate of UK GDP of about 2.56 trillion pounds in 2024, 0.3% of UK GDP is roughly 7.7 billion pounds What could be done with that?

If that were it, we'd probably do it, though we'd have to make contributions of £3 billion or so per year for structural funds, so the net gain would be much less than that.

But we'd have to accept EU regulations, which are often stupid and nonsensical, without any say in how they are determined. I think we'd have essentially no say in about half of our laws and regulations. So it would be a ridiculous situation and I don't think it would even last very long. Either we'd rejoin fully, which I think is unlikely because of the currency, freedom of movement and net contributions issues, or we'd leave again.

We'd also have to abandon our CPTPP membership.

Starmer is desperate for the slightest boost to growth but can't do the one thing that is proven to work - move towards a low tax, low spending, free markets model. Just reducing the tax-spend ratio by 1% of GDP - about a third of what Labour has increased it by since taking office - would increaase GDP by 3-4 times the boost from rejoining the Single Market. So he grasps for small, stupid and probably counterproductive gimmicks like this, rather than admit that his whole party is founded on the economically illiterate lie that is socialism.

Good morning

The first question is will there be a vacancy and no doubt Reeves will have to go first

Miliband is not the answer, indeed I am not sure anyone is

Mahmood seems the only one will real determination but as with the conservatives how can you trust the members to make the right choice ?

Morning Big_G. You are spot on - Reeves would be ousted first. Well, McSweeney first in the hope he can draw the poison, then Reeves. And finally Starmer.

The scenario is that Labour get routed in May. LibDem, Green, SNP, Reform, Plaid. They're losing to everyone bar the Tories. The slideaway is unmistakable and unavoidable. A change has to happen so that new leadership can turn the ship around.

I am not going to make predictions as to who that would be - my 25 years of Labour party membership tells me that members are capable of making major missteps.

For me Labour have two obvious threats - the Greens, and Reform. Ironically both of these parties speak to the same reality - the country is broken and why won't anyone do SOMETHING to fix it?

Polanski and Farage have the advantage of not thinking they will be the next government. Even Farage - he doesn't want to be PM, he doesn't think he can win hence telling donors a deal with the Tories is needed which he knows he won't get.

Labour? The government? Much harder. They need the Vision Thing. And the only person who has it is Ed Milliband. I know he is divisive, but a Britain refounded as a green industrial titan is something we could do. Become a leading exporter of clean energy and with it the technology that harnesses it.