Best Of

Re Hormuz, there was talk, some days ago, of the USA acting as underwriter, to insure oil tankers, which I would have considered essential. Did anything come of it?

Of course not - Trump always chickens out and they couldn’t afford the billions per ship it would cost.

He’s yet to chicken out of the Iran conflict, in spite of the cost.

I find the centrist dads are getting ahead of themselves in procaliming Trump is beaten. Ironically this is just the flip side of Trump when he proclaims he has won.

This will be a longer war than the 12 days and we are not even half way though it. Reporting suffers from being essentially one sided since there is nothing much coming out of Iran. All the reports therefore are Trump centred and the press mostly want to see Trump fall flat on his face.

The most significant event so far imo was the death yesterday of Larijani, the power behind the throne. With him not around to set a direction the IRGC is heading down the path of being a bunch of armed mobs. This could be the first of the cracks in the regime. time will tell.

That is probably true.

And, it’s a dilemma. If Trump wins, he will be even more vile and belligerent. If Iran wins, they will be even more vile and belligerent.

I am not sure that I see that dichotomy. They are both vile and belligerent now and will continue to be so whether they win or lose. This is real Alien-v-Predator stuff.

Re Hormuz, there was talk, some days ago, of the USA acting as underwriter, to insure oil tankers, which I would have considered essential. Did anything come of it?

No, it all went quiet and Trump moved onto something else.

The USA has ceded control of Hormuz to Iran.

Re Hormuz, there was talk, some days ago, of the USA acting as underwriter, to insure oil tankers, which I would have considered essential. Did anything come of it?

No, it all went quiet and Trump moved onto something else.

The USA has ceded control of Hormuz to Iran.

Very much the case.

The USA and Israel seem capable of dropping bombs from 30,000 feet and that’s all.

Re Hormuz, there was talk, some days ago, of the USA acting as underwriter, to insure oil tankers, which I would have considered essential. Did anything come of it?

Of course not - Trump always chickens out and they couldn’t afford the billions per ship it would cost.

He’s yet to chicken out of the Iran conflict, in spite of the cost.

I find the centrist dads are getting ahead of themselves in procaliming Trump is beaten. Ironically this is just the flip side of Trump when he proclaims he has won.

This will be a longer war than the 12 days and we are not even half way though it. Reporting suffers from being essentially one sided since there is nothing much coming out of Iran. All the reports therefore are Trump centred and the press mostly want to see Trump fall flat on his face.

The most significant event so far imo was the death yesterday of Larijani, the power behind the throne. With him not around to set a direction the IRGC is heading down the path of being a bunch of armed mobs. This could be the first of the cracks in the regime. time will tell.

💥Punchy remarks from Angela Rayner at Mainstream event tonight, esp given she’s viewed as front runner in any Labour l’ship contest:

- she warns Keir Starmer he “cannot just go through motions” in face of decline - and that govt is “running out of time” to show it can deliver change people need.

https://bsky.app/profile/pippacrerar.bsky.social/post/3mhbvsmkn2c2s

Looks pretty clearly to be running.

Presumably their takeaway from G&D is the public are against the changes to ILR and migration.

Given the change to ILR, extending it for five years, exclude access to the benefits systems, cheaper tuition fees, free NhS etc etc can she explain where the money will come from to fund this ?

There are fewer than 113 billionaires in the nation so cannot be them

The Boriswave was estimated to cost £234 billion, what people contribute v what they take out, once ILR gained after 5 years. A 5 year delay saves a bit of that.

It’s also not unreasonable to make these changes and changes to ILR have been made before.

https://www.adamsmith.org/blog/britains-ilr-emergency

Reeves - This government will make the UK the best place in the world for quantum and AI companies to start, scale and stay.

The lobbyists for Quantum computers have done a fantastic job for their clients. Government being sold a sinker again like the AI Skills Hub. LIterally no company has any revenue generating business with any real world applications from quantum computers yet and all the uses are still very much a pipe dream. All the claims from the likes of Google about progress and usefulness are very iffy. Certainly there isn't 100k jobs just sitting waiting to for people to be hired into.

And luckily none of our top universities will be flogging 'Quantum - it's the future!' degrees to students for ££££ on the back of it. Otherwise it might look a bit... dodgy.

Do a Masters By Research in Quantum computing (even though we have no access to a Quantum computer). I can see it now.

My (now Lisbon based) tech founder friend had as his thesis building a C compiler for a non-deterministic quantum computer. He's hopeful that -some 25 years after he wrote it- it might soon actually be useful.