Best Of

Prince George is off to Eton..

Haven't they been closed down yet?

I suspect Eton got a massive VAT rebate last year. And going forward as a Veblen good / service I doubt the £63,000 cost matters to parents of the boys attending..

The few times I've encountered Eton (usually as extra staff at a secondary school prom) they've been incredibly generous..

Just the done thing these days isn't it for Royal boys ?

I expect Gordonstoun isn't as it was quite back in Charles' days but that particular era (Of boys going there) has passed now for the main Royal line.

Gordonstoun mainly big Phil’s thing wasn’t it? Fair to say mixed results on available evidence.

Incidentally, on SM one thing we may be forgetting is how the companies are increasingly making their own content unusable without premium membership anyway, through ads, poor layout and irrelevant material.

They may actually kill themselves off for those using them for free, which ironically would have much the same effect as a ban for under 16s.

The classic enshittification process. I find Facebook increasingly unusable. X is a mess. YouTube did some recent updates to the phone app that makes numerous things harder, and they keep pushing Shorts. I've become a moderator of a subreddit to help battle a wave of spam.

I find Facebook virtually unusable.

I see the odd thing from friends or groups I follow but I reckon two thirds are either ads, usually for crap like whiskey casks or solar, or suggested groups to join or local newspapers from other parts of the country with stories I have little interest in.

It used to be great. Especially for what’s on locally. Food festivals, restaurants opening, events, concerts.

Now it’s a nightmare I rarely visit.

I keep Facebook for one reason only - to get up-to-date information about whether restaurants, museums etc are open. I don't follow anyone.

Incidentally, on SM one thing we may be forgetting is how the companies are increasingly making their own content unusable without premium membership anyway, through ads, poor layout and irrelevant material.

They may actually kill themselves off for those using them for free, which ironically would have much the same effect as a ban for under 16s.

The classic enshittification process. I find Facebook increasingly unusable. X is a mess. YouTube did some recent updates to the phone app that makes numerous things harder, and they keep pushing Shorts. I've become a moderator of a subreddit to help battle a wave of spam.

I find Facebook virtually unusable.

I see the odd thing from friends or groups I follow but I reckon two thirds are either ads, usually for crap like whiskey casks or solar, or suggested groups to join or local newspapers from other parts of the country with stories I have little interest in.

It used to be great. Especially for what’s on locally. Food festivals, restaurants opening, events, concerts.

Now it’s a nightmare I rarely visit.

Great poll for Labour, only 5% behind in midterm.

Latest YouGov Westminster voting intention, 14-15 June 2026

Reform UK: 24% (-1 from 7-8 Jun)
Labour: 19% (=)
Conservatives: 19% (=)
Greens: 15% (+1)
Lib Dems: 13% (+1)
Restore Britain: 4% (+1)
SNP: 2% (-1)
Plaid Cymru: 1% (-1)
Your Party: 0% (-1)

https://x.com/yougov/status/2066800321901260841?s=46

Put like that: government in second place, 3 percent swing behind the leading party, still the leading party on their side of the left-right fence... the current hand-wringing is bonkers... Isn't it?

It's as if we've all driven ourselves mad by getting an image of the world that focuses on second-by-second twitches, rather than year-by-year tectonic movements. For some reason.

If we accept the premise that 25% wins the most votes at the next general election then we need recalibrate our usual expectations for what constitutes decent midterm polling for the government.

I thought one of the mantras on here was: "look at the shares, not the gap."

Yes but does that apply when we're 5 party GB wide politics? I genuinely do not know. We might be in 6 party GB wide politics after Thursday depending on how well Restore do.

I still prefer still prefer Ipsos satisfaction ratings over VI at this stage in the cycle however there's a disconnect developing there too which I can only explain due to the Tory brand being tainted/seen as a wasted vote.

All the previous assumptions held true when we were in 2 to 3.5 party politics.

I suspect that a key difference at the moment is that Labour are still the leading party on the left-of-centre, whereas the Conservatives aren't leading on the right-of-centre. If either of those changes, then a lot of bricks might shuffle quite rapidly into a different pattern.

It's certainly possible- though a Restore effect, or Farage getting bored, seems more likely than anything the current Conservative leadership achieve. And Polanski is just as capable of self-combusting as Farage.

Polanski seems to have suffered quite a lot of damage as a result of the extra scrutiny he received before the local elections, and with his response to the Golders Green stabbings.

What's really interesting is that the main beneficiaries - when looking at the wiki opinion poll graph - appear to have been Reform, and not Labour.

The combined vote share for Labour and Tories in the opinion polls right now is 38%. The combined vote share for Reform and Greens is 41%.

There are lots of divides in British politics, but there are enough votes to vote out both of the main parties of the 20th century.