Best Of

Good evening all,
Those who were here yesterday may remember me mentioning the coast to coast bike ride I was doing with my daughter; pleased to report we completed it successfully, arriving in Tynemouth at 2.30 this afternoon. A wonderful morning; June had pulled out absolutely all the stops in the North of England: fields of wheat waving lazily, sheep ambling fatly down the lanes, wildflowers, hares, hawks. I had done a similar,truncated route last summer and felt a little cheated; there were views somewhere behind the cloud, but none that I could see. But this weekend was absolutely perfect.
Also Newcastle is a lovely, lovely city, and North Shields and Tynemouth perfect suburbs.
I'm very proud of her. Not many 14 year olds have achieved something like this and she's raised o er £1500 for her voluntary work in Cambodia.
To celebrate the day, here is a picture of a field of poppies near Ovingham:

I reckon Burnham PM by end of July.

Reading between the lines of the briefings reported here, it seems that Starmer would like to hang on for the best part of another 3 months.

https://www.theguardian.com/politics/2026/jun/21/keir-starmer-expected-exit-plan-clear-way-andy-burnham-become-pm

Burnham shouldn't allow himself to be dictated to by Starmer. 3 months of zombie government would be in no-one's interests. lf Starmer wont go quickly, Burnham should just announce on Tuesday that he is launching a challenge for leader in the expectation that Streeting won't have the numbers to stop him. If that proves to be the case, an unopposed Burnham could walk into Downing Street within a week.

I don’t think it’s within a week because of Labour Party rules

Ok a couple of weeks. On checking Brown became PM 16 days after launching what turned out to be an unopposed leadership campaign.

I'm not saying that it need be quite that quick. But it's the card that Burnham has available to play if Starmer is thinking of messing him around.

It’s basically why I cashed out my Q2 bet because I reckon it happens sometime in July, latest by the end of July. But maybe first or second week

A

Blimey that's looking hot next week. UK record June temperature = 35.6°C Forecast for Heathrow next Wednesday = 39°C. Same again on Thursday.

Another record is going to be not just broken but smashed.

Our daughter has just come back from a holiday in Marrakech with temperatures of between 41 and 48 !!!!!!!!!!!!!

That's utterly ridiculous.

There should be a post apocalyptic movie where things are mostly fine, but demonstrating we now have a lot of places that cannot sustain human life at basically any level without the aid of modern technology, not just unable to maintain modern populations levels.

Dubai...?

Anyway, it does look like the question is not whether the June record will be obliterated (spoiler - it will) but whether the 40.3C from 2022 will be broken. Given that was supposed to be something like a 8000 year return...

Yes, only the most bonkers are denying the reality of Climate Change now.

I've never been sceptical of Climate Change since reading all the papers in 1990 for a university project but I think you can still be sceptical about the actions of the government.

It seems we will have to adapt, and adapt fast. Much faster than most climate models suggested, at least in Western Europe. This seems to me much more important for the UK than worrying about stupid CCS projects or the like.

One of the adaptations is psychological. It's really hard to recognise that hot weather is a threat to health. Many just expect to go about their daily routine regardless.

Had another discussion with an anti-AC type, not long ago. The fact that AC runs off solar panels rather nicely is apparently “anti-climate change talk”

https://x.com/atrupar/status/2068795946826142139

Work will begin immediately on fixing the seriously vandalized Reflecting Pool. I just inspected it, and could only say to myself, and those gathered around me, WOW, who would do such a thing? SICK, DERANGED PEOPLE! We will fix it? President DJT

Trump can hardly say that he picked a complete idiot to refurbish the reflecting pool and he screwed up.

I love this picture of the spiv who did the job:

https://bsky.app/profile/ofthesea.bsky.social/post/3momcgqfznc2s

But what do you expect when you employ "Greenwater Services" 🤣🤣🤣

Heh heh...