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BBC News - Royal Mail given go-ahead to scrap second-class post on Saturdays - BBC News
https://www.bbc.co.uk/news/articles/c36x8k2612ko

It would be better if they Government allowed the royal mail to switch to a 2 day service as implemented in Denmark.

Reality is nothing sent by post is so important that a days delay is that serious and if it really is needed tomorrow there is still special delivery

Increasingly they are offering collection and delivery. You can have as little as a letter collected for a fee. Find their parcel collection really useful rather than trailing a few miles to the local post office. Certainly makes sense in rural areas.

We always have been, we are, and I hope that we always shall be detested in France.

Duke of Wellington

Did he have anything to say about the US?

Waterloo was only three years after the British burned down the White House.

As of 6 July, 21,117 people have arrived in the UK in small boats - up almost 56% compared with the same period last year (BBC). Its really disappointing that this is about the only example of improved productivity that the government can point to.

It also suggests that the hundreds of millions we have now given the French police to do their job has not been particularly well spent. Macron is right to say if you want to stop this you must do something about the pull factors. That would be a serious policy, not pretending that the French have any interest in fixing this for us.

I don't hate the French, I have great admiration for their country and culture, and know and like several French people.

However, it so happens that sometimes France's interests and wishes collide with ours. When that happens, we need to be respectful but determined to uphold our own interests. Instead we have a sort of crawling obsequious inferiority complex on the part of Sir Useless and Charles, contrasting with a few others at the other end of the scale with a Jeremy Clarkson-esque vituperative needy rivalry.

BBC News - Royal Mail given go-ahead to scrap second-class post on Saturdays - BBC News
https://www.bbc.co.uk/news/articles/c36x8k2612ko

There will still be a Saturday collection in places, but the postie will only remove the first-class Mail from the box?

Good morning, everybody.

The number of Russian tanks claimed destroyed/captured by Ukraine has recently gone through 11,000.

The number of Russian artillery pieces claimed destroyed/captured by Ukraine has recently gone through 30,000.

The next milestone is the number of infantry fighting vehicles claimed destroyed/captured by Ukraine will have gone through 23,000.

An extraordinary amount of capacity taken away from a Russian dictator who wishes us harm.

Not to mention another 30,000 Russians are claimed killed, maimed or captured in the weeks since that total went through one million.

By way of comparison, in the ten years of the Soviet-Afghan War, a mere 15,000 Russians were killed. They also only lost 147 tanks, 1,314 IFV/APCs and 433 artillery pieces.

One of my favourite Wellington quotes is: "To define it rudely but not ineptly, engineering is the art of doing for 10 shillings what any fool can do for a pound".

He may have been a brute but he was no fool.

This came back to me yesterday when that fool was explaining that HS2 was going to cost 100% more than the original estimates.

We always have been, we are, and I hope that we always shall be detested in France.

Duke of Wellington

Morning, PB.

Victories or not, I'm not sure a reactiomary brute like Wellington is
the best guide.

As a Remainer/rejoiner the Duke of Wellington is my role model, Britain leading a vast European alliance, it is in our DNA.

You need a European dickhead dictator to make that alliance come together. Trump in the White House doesn't cut it.

And neither does Macron.

The really scary thing to contemplate is, what if those Trump measures that make our skin crawl actually work? If the economy improves? If throwing his weight and his bombs around achieves peace? If the murder rate declines? If people start migrating to the US because they have skills but stop swimming across the Rio Grande because the American Dream is by invitation only?

Does Trumpism then replace democracy as the global norm?