Best Of

I was eating at a hotel in Greece when, upon learning I was British, the nice Belgian lady next to me immediately asked if i had supported Brexit, despite us not exchanging words until that moment. I thought such things only happened in obviously made up twitter stories.

Maybe all those Albanian taxi driver 'testimonials' weren't bullsh*t after all?

I'm in Italy every few weeks and no one has ever asked me this.

Hence my complete surprise.

I tried to swerve the question but they seemed insistent so i took the coward's way out and just implied I'd been against ftom the start and chuckled appreciatively at a joke about angry Brits and passport lines.

I think that eventually no one would admit to voting for Brexit was a bit of a meme..

A hundred years from now, I doubt we'll be able to find person who would admit to being a Brexit voter.

At least one poster (actually several) who definitely voted for Brexit will have their consciousness uploaded to AI, and will still be posting about it. Constantly.

Was this really the limit of Sunak's ambition ?
Why did he even bother.

Rishi Sunak to the Times: "Clearly, I miss the levers of power. I’m proud I brought in the smoking ban for the young. I miss playing cricket in the garden with the England cricket team and the staff. But not much else."
https://x.com/JAHeale/status/1982114041196609600

It was a nice interview piece but I thought that too about that bit. I'd have thought he'd be proud of steadying the ship after Truss pointed it at the rocks.

I suspect history will turn out to look more favourably on Sunak than it will on Truss, Johnson, May and Cameron.

Sunak screwed up HS2 which is going to have long term economic impact.

I suspect he won't be looked as favourably as Brown, Blair or Major..

To be fair to Sunak (and I was angry with him too) it was Johnson and Shapps that doomed HS2 by scrapping the north eastern leg to Leeds and HS3 from Newcastle to Liverpool, without which HS2 couldn't function.

The Integrated Rail Plan was a deliberate forgery, as it was undeliverable, and unless he is as stupid as he comes across (which seems improbable) Shapps knew that when he presented it to the Commons. Sunak was left to clear up the mess, which he did badly.

Where he absolutely screwed up and can't be excused was in the highly illegal fire sale of the land that had been purchased to ensure that nobody else could ever build it - a move so dumb even Cummings would have blinked at it.

Edited for a muddle on the alphabet soup.

Cute that you think there was ever a snowball's chance in hell of the northern leg actually getting built.

It was doomed years ago, the writing was on the wall the second it was agreed to begin construction in the South and only start investing in the North once the London leg was complete.

The only chance there would have been for the northern leg of HS2 is for them to either be built concurrently or to do the northern leg first and the London one last.

Once the London leg was past the point of no return, the Treasury no longer had a reason to keep up the pretence of investing in the North.

Sunak just said the quiet part out loud.

Sigh.

It was not possible to build the northern leg first because without the southern leg, there would have been nowhere for the trains to actually go to. The northern section of the WCML is congested but the southern was ram packed.

I agree the Treasury are either crooks or morons, and I would like to see them relocated to Darlington or Carlisle at which point I think thing ps would radically alter. But engineering reasons made your proposed solution impossible.

Nowhere?

So you couldn't have trains going between say Preston, Manchester, Stoke, Leeds and Birmingham without the southern leg? Why on earth not?

The idea that London is the only place that isn't nowhere is precisely why the northern leg was doomed from the start.

Because you can't fill the northern leg without the traffic to the south.

For good or for ill (I'd argue principally for ill) most traffic in England and Wales flows to London. Not Stoke or Birmingham.

And you couldn't put the extra traffic to the south without more tracks.

That is not true. Most journeys within the North West remain within the North West, and if it were better connected then there would be even more.

And building the Northern leg first, or concurrently, is not the same as saying never build the London leg, whereas by building the London one first ...

Yes, poor connections in the north are just taken as a given.

Someone recently noted that Sheffield and Manchester are the two largest near neighbour cities in Europe without either decent road or rail connections.

Meanwhile, we're building a new line between Cambridge and Oxford.

Last time I was getting the train from Glasgow to Sheffield - it was cheaper and quicker to get the train down to London, then back up to Sheffield than to just book a 'direct' train that was more 'as the crow flies'.

The BBC are utterly obsessed with this sex pest migrant who seems to have been set free very much against his will. No doubt they’ll be reporting shortly on pitchfork wielding vigilantes inspired by their hysteria.
Anyone on the darker side of the racist colour chart should avoid carrying a shopping bag decorated with avocados.

It's totally ridiculous.

"The Etheopian"

An Etheopian English teacher decides to migrate to the UK. He arrives in a small boat and is put in a detention centre

Bored he sits on a wall outside the centre and makes small talk with a couple of bored local school girls.

He makes a lewd joke

The police are called

Word gets out and a far right mob mob mobilise and threaten the centre

The man is charged with an attemted grope and is jailed for 12 months

The prison authorities mistakenly release him after two

He asks if he can serve the rest of his sentence as he has no place to go

The prison authorities say no.

They drop him protesting at a local railway station with no money.

All ports and airports are alerted. A dangerous criminal is on the loose

A terrified population lock up their daughters........


What do you think Mr De Milne? Will it fly......

He tried to kiss the 14 year old. Read her testimony.

I notice your the Tory justice secretary has now raised the Ethiopian fugitive to 'Dangerous Paedophile'. Thank goodness his attempted kiss didn't land or he'd have run out of adjectives

He told the girl that he wanted to have sex with her

I know that you think she should be grateful for the attention, but you’re permanently in the wrong un column

Roger Wrongun has quite the ring to it

The BBC are utterly obsessed with this sex pest migrant who seems to have been set free very much against his will. No doubt they’ll be reporting shortly on pitchfork wielding vigilantes inspired by their hysteria.
Anyone on the darker side of the racist colour chart should avoid carrying a shopping bag decorated with avocados.

It's totally ridiculous.

"The Etheopian"

An Etheopian English teacher decides to migrate to the UK. He arrives in a small boat and is put in a detention centre

Bored he sits on a wall outside the centre and makes small talk with a couple of bored local school girls.

He makes a lewd joke

The police are called

Word gets out and a far right mob mob mobilise and threaten the centre

The man is charged with an attemted grope and is jailed for 12 months

The prison authorities mistakenly release him after two

He asks if he can serve the rest of his sentence as he has no place to go

The prison authorities say no.

They drop him protesting at a local railway station with no money.

All ports and airports are alerted. A dangerous criminal is on the loose

A terrified population lock up their daughters........


What do you think Mr De Milne? Will it fly......

He tried to kiss the 14 year old. Read her testimony.

I notice your the Tory justice secretary has now raised the Ethiopian fugitive to 'Dangerous Paedophile'. Thank goodness his attempted kiss didn't land or he'd have run out of adjectives

He told the girl that he wanted to have sex with her

I know that you think she should be grateful for the attention, but you’re permanently in the wrong un column

Roger Wrongun has quite the ring to it

I was eating at a hotel in Greece when, upon learning I was British, the nice Belgian lady next to me immediately asked if i had supported Brexit, despite us not exchanging words until that moment. I thought such things only happened in obviously made up twitter stories.

Maybe all those Albanian taxi driver 'testimonials' weren't bullsh*t after all?

I'm in Italy every few weeks and no one has ever asked me this.

Hence my complete surprise.

I tried to swerve the question but they seemed insistent so i took the coward's way out and just implied I'd been against ftom the start and chuckled appreciatively at a joke about angry Brits and passport lines.

I think that eventually no one would admit to voting for Brexit was a bit of a meme..

A hundred years from now, I doubt we'll be able to find person who would admit to being a Brexit voter.

At least one poster (actually several) who definitely voted for Brexit will have their consciousness uploaded to AI, and will still be posting about it. Constantly.

The BBC are utterly obsessed with this sex pest migrant who seems to have been set free very much against his will. No doubt they’ll be reporting shortly on pitchfork wielding vigilantes inspired by their hysteria.
Anyone on the darker side of the racist colour chart should avoid carrying a shopping bag decorated with avocados.

It's totally ridiculous.

"The Etheopian"

An Etheopian English teacher decides to migrate to the UK. He arrives in a small boat and is put in a detention centre

Bored he sits on a wall outside the centre and makes small talk with a couple of bored local school girls.

He makes a lewd joke

The police are called

Word gets out and a far right mob mob mobilise and threaten the centre

The man is charged with an attemted grope and is jailed for 12 months

The prison authorities mistakenly release him after two

He asks if he can serve the rest of his sentence as he has no place to go

The prison authorities say no.

They drop him protesting at a local railway station with no money.

All ports and airports are alerted. A dangerous criminal is on the loose

A terrified population lock up their daughters........


What do you think Mr De Milne? Will it fly......

He tried to kiss the 14 year old. Read her testimony.

I notice your the Tory justice secretary has now raised the Ethiopian fugitive to 'Dangerous Paedophile'. Thank goodness his attempted kiss didn't land or he'd have run out of adjectives

He told the girl that he wanted to have sex with her

I know that you think she should be grateful for the attention, but you’re permanently in the wrong un column

Roger Wrongun has quite the ring to it