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The UK had a £26bn tourism deficit in the first half of the year:

Overseas residents made an estimated 7.2 million visits to Great Britain and spent an estimated £4.7 billion in Quarter 1 (Jan to Mar) 2025.

Overseas residents made an estimated 9.3 million visits to Great Britain and spent an estimated £7.9 billion in Quarter 2 (Apr to June) 2025.

Residents of Great Britain made an estimated 18.7 million visits outside of the UK and spent an estimated £16.5 billion in Quarter 1 (Jan to Mar) 2025.

Residents of Great Britain made an estimated 26.0 million visits outside of the UK and spent an estimated £22.1 billion in Quarter 2 (Apr to June) 2025.

https://www.ons.gov.uk/peoplepopulationandcommunity/leisureandtourism/bulletins/overseastravelandtourismprovisional/januarytomarchandapriltojune2025

Which is approximately how much money the government borrowed from foreign sources.

Clearly they need a tax on going abroad.

The UK had a £26bn tourism deficit in the first half of the year:

Overseas residents made an estimated 7.2 million visits to Great Britain and spent an estimated £4.7 billion in Quarter 1 (Jan to Mar) 2025.

Overseas residents made an estimated 9.3 million visits to Great Britain and spent an estimated £7.9 billion in Quarter 2 (Apr to June) 2025.

Residents of Great Britain made an estimated 18.7 million visits outside of the UK and spent an estimated £16.5 billion in Quarter 1 (Jan to Mar) 2025.

Residents of Great Britain made an estimated 26.0 million visits outside of the UK and spent an estimated £22.1 billion in Quarter 2 (Apr to June) 2025.

https://www.ons.gov.uk/peoplepopulationandcommunity/leisureandtourism/bulletins/overseastravelandtourismprovisional/januarytomarchandapriltojune2025

Which is approximately how much money the government borrowed from foreign sources.

What do we expect if we jack up visa fees to ridiculous levels, impose absurdly high aviation taxes, don't build nearly enough airport capacity, stop tourists from reclaiming VAT to the delight of the Frogs and impose planning regulations that mean that building cheap accommodation is impossible?

As usual, a greedy, incompetent, short-sighted and stupid government (this one and the last one) shoots itself and the country in both feet.

I am going to say something unpopular.

But so be it.

I am fed up with people calling Andrew a nonce. I have spelt out what my view of him is on here on earlier threads. It is not remotely flattering, to put it mildly.

But he has not been charged let alone convicted of anything. Nor will he be in relation to the late Ms Giuffre for obvious reasons.

And given this society's abysmal failures to deal properly or at all with actual nonces and men who have been convicted of very serious crimes - I will remind you that far too many men convicted of the possession of hundreds, thousands even of the worst category of child abuse images - each of which is evidence of a crime -avoid jail - thus leaving them entirely free to continue with their revolting harmful activities, the focus on Andrew seems to me to be displacement activity of the worst and most futile kind.

We can have lots of outrage directed at one individual while blithely ignoring our failure to do anything about the actual criminals in our midst. The inquiry about the banned subject announced several months ago will likely not even get started until next year, a year after it all kicked off and decades after many of the crimes. Many of those covered by the IICSA Reports will never receive justice and virtually all of those responsible for the crimes it covers have escaped any sort of accountability, naming or shaming. But hey shouting abuse at a stupid ex-royal - well that'll make some feel better even if it does damn all for any of the victims. And so we can feel self-righteous and good about ourselves - apparently the only metric which matters these days - while continuing to do nothing effective about the criminals or for the victims.

It's pathetic.

To an extent I agree.

What is in the public domain is pretty convincing, and I expect the King has access to much more in depth investigation.

I would much rather see a public trial or at least enquiry into his activities with Epstein and Maxwell. I dont think we will see this, so it seems stripping him of his baubles is all we will see.

What is in the public domain is colourable. There is a certain amount of evidence suggesting that Ms Giuffre was not the most reliable or consistent of witnesses, one reason why she was not a prosecution witness in the Ghislaine Maxwell trial. There may be many reasons why she was not considered reliable or used as a witness, some of which very likely arising from what was done to her. But nonetheless I note it because I dislike people ignoring potentially relevant evidence because it does not fit with the opinion they have already formed. And I see quite a lot of that happening in this matter.

Andrew is not a convicted criminal. He is a shameful embarrassment of a man and to his family.

An inquiry into Epstein and his associates, many of which included very senior people in business, politics and finance in the US and elsewhere would be extremely interesting. But we are not going to get it, are we, because those very senior people in politics, business, finance & elsewhere are successfully ensuring that their role and scummy / possibly criminal behaviour is ignored while an equally scummy royal provides the perfect distraction / scapegoat.

Blackening the name and reputation of the victim is a tactic often used to prevent them going through with a court appearance. It was the reason that prosecutions for trafficking often didnt go forward in the North of England too.

There is potential evidence out there, all the flight logs for Epsteins private jet and passenger lists for example, and of course Maxwell herself. It seems that the President prefers to suspend the legislature to having the Epstein files published. I am sure many other famous names are also not wanting these published.

But there is very likely that there is enough evidence to convict or acquit at a criminal level. Giuffre describes multiple witnesses in her autobiography.

Her autobiography is not, I think, tremendously reliable. There were multiple versions of it. Some of it was described by her as "fictionalised" and so on. I have yet to understand why the US criminal authorities never used any of the evidence that was available years ago to take action against the very many men who abused those girls. Too important in the US to challenge I guess.

Up with Norwegian and Welsh, Dutch must be one of the most pointless languages to learn, since almost all native speakers have far greater English proficiency than you would ever achieve in their own language. And with Dutch it does sadly sound as if you have a pubic hair stuck in your throat.

As a bet, backing the Dutch Libs would clearly have been a cracking one. The odds were long, of course, because no-one saw it coming.

Maybe Ed Davey will succeed where Jo Swinson failed??

I think that may br the case if one only wants simple communication, but I think it is impossible to fully understand a culture without understanding the language spoken.

One of my favourite Dutch words is "Lekker", though I learnt it in South Africa.

How and when to describe something as Lekker is covered here, alongside some other Dutch words that give insight into the culture:

https://www.cursor.tue.nl/en/news/2023/september/week-1/new-in-the-netherlands-dutch-words#:~:text=Lekker,or a 'lekkere bonus'.

Similarly the German love of complex yet specific compound nouns or the English love of euphemism says a fair bit about the respective cultures.

Good morning, everyone.

'Lekking' (others tend to write it as 'laking') is Yorkshire slang from Viking times which means 'playing'.

My grandfather used to say of the particularly idle, "he's too lazy to lake".

Wot - centrist/progressive party makes huge gains at the expense nasty populists? Imagine if that becomes a thing....

To an extent, what happened was that parties who were in the coalition government lost seats to ideologically similar parties who were not. So, the PVV (hard right populists) lost 11 seats, but 2 similar parties gained seats: Ja21 up 8, FvD up 4. The NSC were wiped out, losing 20, but the CDA were up 13. The NSC began as a CDA split.

D66 did great (+17), but their gains were partly from the left (GL/PvdA -5, SP -2, Volt -1). So, maybe half the D66 gains were from the NSC collapse?

The hard right vote was similar in size, but splintered, while the centrist-progressives made some gains from the centre-right and centre-left.

My understanding is that D66 have shifted to the right, draped themselves in the flag, and made claims about getting asylum under control.

Ah so they are in the Keir Starmer mould!

But successful...

What do you mean, Starmer won a huge majority.

You'd never know it, such is his timidity...

The UK had a £26bn tourism deficit in the first half of the year:

Overseas residents made an estimated 7.2 million visits to Great Britain and spent an estimated £4.7 billion in Quarter 1 (Jan to Mar) 2025.

Overseas residents made an estimated 9.3 million visits to Great Britain and spent an estimated £7.9 billion in Quarter 2 (Apr to June) 2025.

Residents of Great Britain made an estimated 18.7 million visits outside of the UK and spent an estimated £16.5 billion in Quarter 1 (Jan to Mar) 2025.

Residents of Great Britain made an estimated 26.0 million visits outside of the UK and spent an estimated £22.1 billion in Quarter 2 (Apr to June) 2025.

https://www.ons.gov.uk/peoplepopulationandcommunity/leisureandtourism/bulletins/overseastravelandtourismprovisional/januarytomarchandapriltojune2025

Which is approximately how much money the government borrowed from foreign sources.

There's your black hole, Chancellor - holibobs.