Best Of

No 10 was braced for Reeves or Miliband to quit. Then Healey jumped ship
https://www.thetimes.com/uk/politics/article/keir-starmer-defence-strategy-john-healey-bsncps22n (£££)

Healy and Carns resigning, with blistering letters to the PM, was about the worst case scenario for No.10.

No-one would have mourned Reeves or Miliband walking away.

On what possible planet would Reeves have resigned? Her only hope of remaining as chancellor is for Starmer to stay on.

Does Reeves want to remain Chancellor for an extra few weeks or would she fancy three years of first class flights and state banquets as Foreign Secretary to a grateful Wes Streeting Andy Burnham? Or even, since this is Labour, a chance to build something running a spending department – whether you like what Miliband, Phillipson and Streeting have done or not, at least they've done something.

Too late - she’s too politically damaged and too closely associated with Starmer for Burnham to offer her a job.

We'll see. I'm not convinced Burnham will want to exacerbate party splits on day one.

Good morning

I suspect the bond market's patience is going to be stretched to breaking point in the next few weeks, especially if Burnham carries out his threat to nationalise water and energy

Utilities were publicly owned

Stolen and Thatcher ruined by greed and corruption.

Labour should take back in to public ownership paying shareholders a minimal peppercorn sum

Power to the People

Bringing accountability back

Some of us are old enough to remember 1980s British Telecom, where you’d wait three months for line to be installed, it would end up being a shared party line, and you’d better be damn grateful they were kind enough to give you service in the first place.

Privatisation and competition were the best things to ever happen to utilities.

Now do water

Shit pumped out levels, leaks, investment levels, quality of water, the lot.

Scottish Water is nationalised and does not have a brilliant record, concealed somewhat by the fact we have gallons of the stuff. Pollution is still pretty bad but somehow better because it's the government doing it rather than private companies.

The difference is that what we pay goes back into the public coffers rather to overseas dividends. I contend that the former is marginally better, even though neither system ensures the appropriate investment in the infrastructure.

No 10 was braced for Reeves or Miliband to quit. Then Healey jumped ship
https://www.thetimes.com/uk/politics/article/keir-starmer-defence-strategy-john-healey-bsncps22n (£££)

Healy and Carns resigning, with blistering letters to the PM, was about the worst case scenario for No.10.

No-one would have mourned Reeves or Miliband walking away.

On what possible planet would Reeves have resigned? Her only hope of remaining as chancellor is for Starmer to stay on.

Does Reeves want to remain Chancellor for an extra few weeks or would she fancy three years of first class flights and state banquets as Foreign Secretary to a grateful Wes Streeting Andy Burnham? Or even, since this is Labour, a chance to build something running a spending department – whether you like what Miliband, Phillipson and Streeting have done or not, at least they've done something.

Too late - she’s too politically damaged and too closely associated with Starmer for Burnham to offer her a job.

We'll see. I'm not convinced Burnham will want to exacerbate party splits on day one.

Good morning

I suspect the bond market's patience is going to be stretched to breaking point in the next few weeks, especially if Burnham carries out his threat to nationalise water and energy

Utilities were publicly owned

Stolen and Thatcher ruined by greed and corruption.

Labour should take back in to public ownership paying shareholders a minimal peppercorn sum

Power to the People

Bringing accountability back

Some of us are old enough to remember 1980s British Telecom, where you’d wait three months for line to be installed, it would end up being a shared party line, and you’d better be damn grateful they were kind enough to give you service in the first place.

Privatisation and competition were the best things to ever happen to utilities.

Sorry, Sandpit, but that's just rubbish.
There is simply no correspondence at all between a telecoms company and a water utility.

I'm also quite old enough to recall the 80s. Privatisation was well merited for BT, and a disaster for water utilities.

ICYMI: yesterday was a very dark day for the UK justice system.

Four people sentenced for a crime they were not convicted of, after a trial where the judge deliberately concealed that possibility from the jury and prevented the media from reporting on it.

I’ve not doubt they would have been acquitted had the jury been made aware of what crime they were convicting them off, so in effect trial by jury has ended in the UK.

The only logical response for jurors is to always acquit in the future.

How’s the WPC one of them bludgeoned and accused of being complicit in a Genocide ?

None of the 4 sentenced yesterday bludgeoned anybody.

The person who did that has already been dealt with not as a terrorist

You are completely lost if you think deliberately hiding motivation from a jury then reintroducing it after the verdict is OK

It's happened again. See social media for video footage of the incident.

https://www.bbc.co.uk/news/articles/c4gypqp0rp9o

Girl, 17, stabbed in the neck in street attack

The homicide rate in the UK is at its lowest since 1977.

Were we getting many stabbings in the neck and attempted public beheadings in 1977?

Who knows, because back in 1977 we didn't have phones and CCTV to film all this stuff and make it as 'newsworthy'. That's what's different now - the amount captured on film and distributed on social media.

However, data shows that the rate of violent crime was higher in 1977 than it is now.

I think we knew on public murders, because cameras and newspapers still existed even if they didn't capture in "real time".

FWIW, this is @bondegezou usual one-man-rebuttal-unit bullshit again. The graph he's referring to is here and the murder rate was higher than in 1977 less than 2 years ago:

https://www.ons.gov.uk/peoplepopulationandcommunity/crimeandjustice/articles/homicideinenglandandwales/yearendingmarch2025

There's a big spike in 2003. Initially my mind jumped to the 7/7 terror attacks, but they were in 2005 and those are probably captured differently.

How does that rebut what I said? The most recent figures (2025) show the lowest homicide rate since 1977. The figures have been coming down. So, yes, they were higher two years ago. I wasn’t claiming the figures two years ago were the lowest since 1977.

Lol!

I couldn't give a shit about the World Cup.

Sorry.

You will if we go deep. No true patriot can remain unmoved in that event. Bet you any money I'm right. You might not be able to get into the football itself but you'll be rooting hard for us to do it. Just simply because of the joy it will bring to so many English people.

Probably, but that will be for different reasons to the love of football.

Which I just don't have.

I don't love football but I do like it. I think that objectively it is the best sport. There's a reason it is the most widely played game in the world.

I think it's the simplest ball game - jumpers for goalposts, sort of thing - and so it's the easiest to set up and play in any space, with any number of people. This also extends to being a game that's easy to play without a referee - an informal game of cricket abandons lbw, for example, because there's no umpire to adjudicate.

Low barriers to enter are how you get mass participation. That's a widely applicable lesson.

ICYMI: yesterday was a very dark day for the UK justice system.

Four people sentenced for a crime they were not convicted of, after a trial where the judge deliberately concealed that possibility from the jury and prevented the media from reporting on it.

I’ve not doubt they would have been acquitted had the jury been made aware of what crime they were convicting them off, so in effect trial by jury has ended in the UK.

The only logical response for jurors is to always acquit in the future.

I am not sure you account is full and complete. But whatever:

1) They can appeal
2) Sentencing takes account of circumstances; the judge does not normally ask the jury's view of the mitigating or aggravating circumstances
3) Relatedly, I just note that the Liberty talking head on R4 Today this morning was loquacious on all subjects except one, where she pivoted and and no commented on the GBH aspect of the case.

1) Yes, and? If it gets overturned on appeal it’s even more egregious because the system has failed in the first instance
2) It’s not an aggravating factor, it’s a different crime. There are people with simple criminal damage convictions being locked up for terrorism. It has lifelong implications.
3) That’s entirely beside the point. The guy was charged with GBH, evidence was put to the jury, and he was rightly convicted.

No 10 was braced for Reeves or Miliband to quit. Then Healey jumped ship
https://www.thetimes.com/uk/politics/article/keir-starmer-defence-strategy-john-healey-bsncps22n (£££)

Healy and Carns resigning, with blistering letters to the PM, was about the worst case scenario for No.10.

No-one would have mourned Reeves or Miliband walking away.

On what possible planet would Reeves have resigned? Her only hope of remaining as chancellor is for Starmer to stay on.

Does Reeves want to remain Chancellor for an extra few weeks or would she fancy three years of first class flights and state banquets as Foreign Secretary to a grateful Wes Streeting Andy Burnham? Or even, since this is Labour, a chance to build something running a spending department – whether you like what Miliband, Phillipson and Streeting have done or not, at least they've done something.

Too late - she’s too politically damaged and too closely associated with Starmer for Burnham to offer her a job.

We'll see. I'm not convinced Burnham will want to exacerbate party splits on day one.

Good morning

I suspect the bond market's patience is going to be stretched to breaking point in the next few weeks, especially if Burnham carries out his threat to nationalise water and energy

Utilities were publicly owned

Stolen and Thatcher ruined by greed and corruption.

Labour should take back in to public ownership paying shareholders a minimal peppercorn sum

Power to the People

Bringing accountability back

Some of us are old enough to remember 1980s British Telecom, where you’d wait three months for line to be installed, it would end up being a shared party line, and you’d better be damn grateful they were kind enough to give you service in the first place.

Privatisation and competition were the best things to ever happen to utilities.

Maybe, but that doesn't apply to water. Unless I've missed it, I can't choose my supplier and there's no meaningful competition.

I think that we have both very successful privatisation and disastrous privatisation is great because we are forced to discuss the mechanisms rather than revert to ideology.

FWIW, I want to see more market liberalisation in energy (nodal pricing, bin the ridiculous price cap), and the opposite in water. The fundamentals are different and the approach should be different.

No 10 was braced for Reeves or Miliband to quit. Then Healey jumped ship
https://www.thetimes.com/uk/politics/article/keir-starmer-defence-strategy-john-healey-bsncps22n (£££)

Healy and Carns resigning, with blistering letters to the PM, was about the worst case scenario for No.10.

No-one would have mourned Reeves or Miliband walking away.

On what possible planet would Reeves have resigned? Her only hope of remaining as chancellor is for Starmer to stay on.

Does Reeves want to remain Chancellor for an extra few weeks or would she fancy three years of first class flights and state banquets as Foreign Secretary to a grateful Wes Streeting Andy Burnham? Or even, since this is Labour, a chance to build something running a spending department – whether you like what Miliband, Phillipson and Streeting have done or not, at least they've done something.

Too late - she’s too politically damaged and too closely associated with Starmer for Burnham to offer her a job.

We'll see. I'm not convinced Burnham will want to exacerbate party splits on day one.

Good morning

I suspect the bond market's patience is going to be stretched to breaking point in the next few weeks, especially if Burnham carries out his threat to nationalise water and energy

Utilities were publicly owned

Stolen and Thatcher ruined by greed and corruption.

Labour should take back in to public ownership paying shareholders a minimal peppercorn sum

Power to the People

Bringing accountability back

Some of us are old enough to remember 1980s British Telecom, where you’d wait three months for line to be installed, it would end up being a shared party line, and you’d better be damn grateful they were kind enough to give you service in the first place.

Privatisation and competition were the best things to ever happen to utilities.

Maybe, but that doesn't apply to water. Unless I've missed it, I can't choose my supplier and there's no meaningful competition.