Best Of

OT. I have a question for the PB hive mind.

Flatlander Sr died last week. I am both sad and relieved as he'd been poorly for quite some time and most definitely wasn't having any fun. I propped him up at home for many years and have no regrets on that score.

Thanks to the current stock market bubble, and no doubt much to HYUFD's disgust, his estate will attract IHT, although it won't be a vast amount in the grand scheme of things. He was not one to plan and as POA there was a limit to what I could do about it.

Do I:

a) Make a deed of variation to set up a charitable organisation to buy a few fields to grow moss / newts / trees or distribute to other organisations doing the same.

b) Pay the government


On the one hand, Rachel from Accounts is desperate and over the last 6 months he definitely incurred costs to the NHS and the local council. And it won't be a Bill Gates style legacy that could make a big difference.

On the other hand, its the government, isn't it?

Assume that the difference in inheritance won't really change my cheap lifestyle.

We’re there any charitable causes that mattered to him personally? If so, then sure. Otherwise I think I’d probably pay the IHT.

He showed no inclination to give money away, although one thing he did do was visit the local WT reserve a lot.

I have no immediate heirs and what I can't spend will end up with such causes anyway, so it would be nice to do something now.

However, my dilemma is that doing so would be at least partially for me, and a deed of variation should be done acting as him.


My mum, on the other hand, did not even like visiting National Trust properties because they were the product of punitive IHT, and some of the legacy would have been originally hers. I'm not sure why she had that attitude as the owner of an average semi-detached but she definitely did. So perhaps that's how I justify it.


Another illustration of IHT as voluntary, and why it should perhaps be abolished. I could do without this nonsense...

Yeah guys, Gavin Newsom’s content is ridiculous. But it’s making you uncomfortable because he’s holding up a mirror to what you tolerate on behalf of partisanship. It jolts people out of their passive acceptance of how insane Trump sounds.
https://x.com/SarahLongwell25/status/1957650485575618799

Newsom gets to be a jerk, and claim the (relative) high ground of parody.
That's a sweet spot for a politician.

He’s wrestling with a pig, there’s no way he can keep it up for more than a few weeks, and the policy he’s talking about is a blatant and unpopular exercise in Gerrymandering, to make California worse than it is already.

Meanwhile, as he’s playing Twitter games with Texas and the president, his own State is a total mess. Make America California Again really isn’t a popular message.

A week or 2 ago you were claiming that California was already gerrymandered to the max by Dems, despite the fact that redistricting is done by an independent commission in California.

Californians seem to like their independent redistricting, so Newsom's proposed map starts off at a disadvantage. If he can frame it as retaliation for Republican dirty tricks, and a referendum on Trump, I guess he can win the vote on the proposition - so it makes sense to get as much attention for this framing as possible, as early as possible.

OT. I have a question for the PB hive mind.

Flatlander Sr died last week. I am both sad and relieved as he'd been poorly for quite some time and most definitely wasn't having any fun. I propped him up at home for many years and have no regrets on that score.

Thanks to the current stock market bubble, and no doubt much to HYUFD's disgust, his estate will attract IHT, although it won't be a vast amount in the grand scheme of things. He was not one to plan and as POA there was a limit to what I could do about it.

Do I:

a) Make a deed of variation to set up a charitable organisation to buy a few fields to grow moss / newts / trees or distribute to other organisations doing the same.

b) Pay the government


On the one hand, Rachel from Accounts is desperate and over the last 6 months he definitely incurred costs to the NHS and the local council. And it won't be a Bill Gates style legacy that could make a big difference.

On the other hand, it is the government, isn't it?

Assume that the difference in inheritance won't really change my cheap lifestyle.

Many condolences.

Yeah guys, Gavin Newsom’s content is ridiculous. But it’s making you uncomfortable because he’s holding up a mirror to what you tolerate on behalf of partisanship. It jolts people out of their passive acceptance of how insane Trump sounds.
https://x.com/SarahLongwell25/status/1957650485575618799

Newsom gets to be a jerk, and claim the (relative) high ground of parody.
That's a sweet spot for a politician.

He’s wrestling with a pig, there’s no way he can keep it up for more than a few weeks, and the policy he’s talking about is a blatant and unpopular exercise in Gerrymandering, to make California worse than it is already.

Meanwhile, as he’s playing Twitter games with Texas and the president, his own State is a total mess. Make America California Again really isn’t a popular message.

A week or 2 ago you were claiming that California was already gerrymandered to the max by Dems, despite the fact that redistricting is done by an independent commission in California.

Californians seem to like their independent redistricting, so Newsom's proposed map starts off at a disadvantage. If he can frame it as retaliation for Republican dirty tricks, and a referendum on Trump, I guess he can win the vote on the proposition - so it makes sense to get as much attention for this framing as possible, as early as possible.

'Independent' California - Dem 43 GOP 9
'Gerrymandered' Texas - GOP25 Dem 13

Judge an organisation by its actions not its name.

California has an independent commission in the same way that East Germany was a Democratic Republic.

Good morning

This is today's piece by Lord Ashcroft which is quite informative on the subject of Jemi Badenoch etc

https://lordashcroftpolls.com/2025/08/this-is-what-happens-when-you-get-normal-people-like-us-and-no-one-listens-to-them-my-latest-focus-groups/

To be honest, all pretty predictable stuff.

Long on complaints and whingeing, short on offering solutions - at least solutions which would be legal and cost effective at any rate. I'd love to see people in thiese groups given the challenge of coming up with some answers.

Governing is difficult - always has been - but the ordure reserved for professional politicians is something else.

I'd like to see anyone from those focus groups run the country for a week let alone a month. We go on about wanting "people who've done a day's work" in Government but as we've seen, business people make bad politicians, army officers don't always do that well.

It's a really tough job trying to balance all the sectional interests - you end up either doing nothing and everyone complains or you do something and everyone complains.

This is fair up to a point, but not entirely. Politics and governing is a career choice and it is very difficult. A majority government undertakes to do really well everything that government has taken to itself to do. To this end it has in practice unfettered power to fund itself through taxation, and the entire resource of the state to get things done, and an unfettered supply of expertise it can call on to help.

It is a reasonable expectation that government will be truthful, honest, very competent at running all the things it has decided to run, very good at delivering its promises and very good at communicating with the public.

I think government, including this one, could do better in meeting these expectations. The expectation I describe is a reasonable one.

And Leon was asking why they brought him along.

WSJ also reports that, according to their information, during the closed part of the meeting, Finnish President Alexander Stubb called the cities of Kramatorsk and Slavyansk "a Bastion against the Huns"

According to the publication's sources, this impressed Trump.
https://x.com/front_ukrainian/status/1957693681076445382

Of course there's also this.

TRUMP: President Stubb of Finland. He's uh, somebody that, where are we here? Huh?

STUBB: I'm right here

TRUMP: Oh.
https://x.com/atrupar/status/1957517026647249326

@atrupar.com‬

this is where Stubb was sitting when Trump couldn't see him btw

https://bsky.app/profile/atrupar.com/post/3lwp4dst7522d