Best Of

John Simpson on BBC2: the attack on Taiwan will probably come sooner rather than later.

It's quite hard to attack Taiwan, due to the large amount of sea that the invasion force would need to cross. At the very least, we'd get lots of warning because China would need to martial its forces in ports on its Eastern seaboard.

On Polymarket, the current market odds are 14% for China invading an inhabited part of Taiwan during 2025.

I would sell these odds & I think the correct odds are something like 1%.

Xi isn't Putin & he won't blunder into a military conflict for no reason.

Xi's main goal is the economic development of China. He wants to make the country into an economic superpower, through things like investment in AI. He won't risk China's economic strength by needlessly attacking Taiwan.

https://polymarket.com/event/will-china-invade-taiwan-in-2025?tid=1746658794174

I agree it's < 14% but https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Kinmen

This would likely be the first shot.

So... it's an interesting question.

I don't think a Chinese invasion of the Taiwanese mainland is feasible, without utterly horrendous losses. Taiwan has a lot of pretty capable aircraft, and a small (but growing) submarine fleet.

How would you get hundreds of thousands of troops across the Taiwan strait?

It's simply not feasible.

On the other hand, a blockade of Taiwan could probably be very effective, especially if the goal was to essentially bring the RoC into China's orbit without bloodshed. Effectively, the Chinese government would make it clear it could starve / strange Taiwan to death.

Wonder what the UK has given to get lower tariffs? Chlorinated Chicken on the menu ;-)

I hope it's Zac Goldsmith.

That's unambitious. Couldn't we throw in Liz Truss, Nigel Farage and get them to take back Massive Johnson as well?

Don’t push it, they might try and send back Prince Harry if we over-egg our demands.

He could do a flat share with Prince Andrew perhaps?

As long as Meghan and the children stayed in the US.

Well Harry lied on his immigration forms, I am surprised he isn't in a Central American Super Max jail by now....

Marks and Spencer. Camden

All doors temporarily locked. Had to unlock them for me so I could get in

“Disruption by shoplifters, Sir”

But remember we are all imagining it, as @Eabhal assures us

Jeezo, this has really upset you.

FWIW, my local Scotmid regularly gets cleaned out by a group of 16-year olds. I'm not suggesting it's not happening, just that the sudden obsession with it is a bit odd.

The big spike happened in 2020 and I don't recall any conniptions about it then. It's similar to small boats to a lesser extent, with the giant leap happening in 2022.

I respect your lived experience, of course.

Lived experience is code for own facts.

This is actual EXPERIENCE.

We've both seen it over the last 48 hours. It's rife.

You're a Moron. That's my lived experience of you.

My lived experience from 8 years ago = constant shoplifting and getting spoken to by the police for energetically removing headtorches from a thief.

We never reported it.

That's my concern about these statistics. Has something happened that makes it more likely that these offences are reported or is this a genuine increase? My anecdotal impression is very much the latter but there may be other reasons.

Well, my lived experience is that the local Lidl now has a bouncer on the door, as does Sainsbury's.

The local corner shop has put up a glass wall for the checkout.

Something has changed.

I remember drink shops in particular having glass walls and metal bars 20 years ago. But I am not disputing there has been an increase. When people stop enforcing the law people take advantage. It is (wrongly) regarded as a victimless crime.

And its ridiculous it is like this. When I was a fiscal in Dundee 25 years ago we would get the Sheriff to go off the bench and we (prosecution and defence) would look at the videos. If the accused could be ID'd they pled. It they couldn't the case was dropped. The percentage where the CCTV was so poor that ID was not possible was high.

These days CCTV can give you an identification at least a couple of hundred yards away. It is incredibly clear. Catching these people, if we could be bothered, should be easy.

Obviously, some of the PB oldies have rose tinted glasses on, and remember the 80s as a time when you could leave your front door open, go on holiday for a fortnight, and the local kids would go in and vacuum your house for you and leave your kitchen immaculate.

Despite their obvious senility, it is clear that shoplifting has gotten significantly more prevalent since funding for the police and courts was slashed, because the likelihood of negative consequences for those who do is close to zero.

I would ask: whence came this absurd idea that shoplifting shall not be prosecuted?!

It seems to have emerged in the UK and the USA at roughly the same time

Probably when it was seen as more expense than it was worth.

At societal level, that's obviously silly- in many areas, we get as much crime as we are willing to collectively walk past- but a dessicated spreadsheet shagger would prioritise other crimes which allow more solved cases for less hassle and expense.

If you manage by KPI- and the UK has done little else since the Blair years, and it's a global trend- expect KPI to bite you on the bum.

And that's not necessarily a bad thing. Just look how good the stats are on physical violence, theft (primarily because burglaries have dropped off), and so on.

If you were to take a cold look at it, it's fraud and sexual assault that you would spend all the cash on. Both can be devastating to people in a way that shoplifting simply is not - the ROI there is unbeatable.

(but I do understand the broken window theory. I also think there is an intrinsic value in just walking around in a broadly crime free society).

Agreed- the principle is pretty sensible. Put the money where it will do most good first, and work down from there. It's a similar sort of idea to QALYs in medicine. The catch is that you have to get the "benefit" calculation spot-on, and there seems to be a reality check missing here.

The other problem is what happens if the money runs out before you get to the bottom of your list of crimes you would like to stop? Which is almost certainly the case at the moment. We want less shoplifting, less grafitti... does that want extend to paying more, or having less of something else, to achieve it? The reality is... probably not.

On a more serious note to my earlier postings about bolt cutters. What you get is what we have now which is private law. Get burglared you don't go to the police you go have a word with some people if you want your stuff back and some money changes hand....been there done that

Is it private law or just the birth of a new proto-State that may grow to replace the old one?

Don't think they plan to form a government, just people who dont mind making some untaxed money to get your stuff back

Ah! A nascent security apparatus!

Not really as they are generally criminal themselves....in my case I really wanted the laptop back because it had lots of irreplacable photo's of my son. I know for a fact however as a group they had murdered, committed assaults, run guns and drugs etc

This is why we need a really tough brutal hard right government. Why should you have to buy off criminal gangs to get your stuff back. You pay your taxes and obey the law, you deserve so much better and I am done with the liberals

This is not Britain. We are losing Britain. We need a severe rightwing government to restore order and medically blind litterlouts and sort this shit out

Or we could just fund the police and courts properly. Lots of left wing countries seem to have managed that.

Increasingly not true. Increasingly, as I travel the world, the countries that are doing well have significantly authoritarian governments that inflict serious punishments on minor offenders. Their cities are clean, crime is low, graffiti does not exist, young women can go solo jogging at 10pm with no fear

I want that for my daughters, I want that for the UK

Norway, Finland, Denmark, Iceland, and Switzerland all wave hello.

All have - to you - extremely low levels of incarceration, all of which pursue policies which you would regard as wanky and liberal. And yet, all have extremely low levels of petter and serious crime.

All those countries have incarceration rates of around 50 out of every 100,000 people. By contrast,

USA: 664 per 100k
UK: 130 per 100k

The problem is not the lack of severity of the punishment, it is the fact that we aren't successfully arresting and prosecuting people.

If we successfully prosecute more people then presumably the incarceration rate will go up?

The way I look at is like this:

Criminals think about
- chance of getting caught
- likelihood of getting punished
- distance in the future before said punishment happens
and
- severity of punishment

If it 1% * 1% * 3 years then it doesn't matter whether you are removing a hand or not, the deterrence isn't there.

It is much more important to staff up, and speed up the justice system than it is to fuck around with the severity.

If we were catching most shoplifters, and we were punishing most shoplifters, then we could say "Oh, the punishment isn't severe enough". But I don't believe that's the problem: I believe the problem is that shoplifters aren't being caught, aren't being prosecuted, and when trials do happen, they're three years in the future, meaning the likelihood of a guilty verdict is massively diminished.

And even if you do get a guilty verdict you're likely to just get a suspended sentence from our revolving door justice system.

And that's because we haven't invested in enough prison capacity.

Politicians like to say "tougher sentences", because that's easy and it shows they're doing something.

But if there aren't prison places, then all that happens is that other people get let out earlier.

The fundamental problem is one of lack of money. Really, we should be spending 50% more on the police and the prisons, and twice as much on the judicial system.

Prosecco is up there with pineapple on pizza and radiohead live....

Come on nothing is worse than radiohead live except maybe coldplay

Coldplay did produce one genuinely excellent album. The rest of their discography is rubbish, mind.

Shall we admit we have different musical tastes then, as in I have one and you don't?

I think we'd agree that 90% of Coldplay is shit. I just happen to be quite fond of A Rush of Blood to the Head. Which is odd, because at the time I was breaking up with my (then) girlfriend, and listened to it about 300 times because I was really depressed.