Best Of

I am feeling optimistic about the UK and the future.

Cambridge men as PM and Chancellor.

Trying to find a market on Burnham to win more seats than Starmer in 2024.

The first Cambridge PM since Stanley Baldwin. The first Cambridge CoE since Kwasi Kwarteng.

I went to university in Cambridge. I didn't go to Cambridge University, though.

Anglia Ruskin; Almost (a) Real University!

It won't have been called Anglia Ruskin in your day though!

I went as an 'elderly' post-grad in the 90's.

The best sort of postgrad! I say that as someone who teaches lots of postgrads.

A driving instructor told me the best pupils were women and teenage boys, and the worst were middle-aged men because they knew it all and wouldn't learn, whereas women were more amenable to instruction and teenagers were so desperate to pass that they'd put their egos aside for one hour a week.

I've been on some research projects looking at doctors struck off for incompetence. They're nearly all men. One of our best theories for why this is is that the women caught being incompetent apologise and accept re-training; it's only the men who fight the system and end up being struck off.

Did a charity event at a Country estate and came across a shooting party of Vets, thought it was clays not birds they were shooting!

It was a mixed group of Men and Woman and the Instructor told us the woman won and usually do unmixed groups. He was adamant that it was because they listened to instructions and followed them while the men thought they knew what to do from watching action movies!

Peter. (Not Sadiq!)

How long are we giving the honeymoon?

A month? Two months? Over by Xmas?

Where will he struggle?

Areas where Burnham might find it hard to decide and communicate.

Firstly where, for reasons of incentive you have to decide to not give extra money to the poorest because you have to keep it for the rich. (Eg not aligning capital gains and IT/NI rates), and where you have to directly tax people because employment costs are crashing the entry level/low pay jobs market.

Secondly where you can't give extra money to the poorest because the government has cash of minus £3trillion and also needs to spend a trillion more on wars that haven't started and may never.

I think his history and language suggests to socialists that at heart he has a socialist mindset. He is either going to disappoint them, or he is going to disappoint those who live in reality.

It won't be long before the thought sets in that on this very day the public and political class have made an irrevocable decision based on almost zero evidence but an extraordinary surge of zeitgeist about someone the public know almost nothing about.

By repute in Manchester he has been good at getting on with and doing things with opposition parties. I would love to see that continue. I have never thought that to be in opposition should mean opposing everything the government does, yet too often that is what seems to happen.

This country needs to look properly at social care and how we fund health. We need to be serious about trying to balance the books. If you want Scandinavian style social democracy and all the sweeties that leads too, we need to pay the taxes to afford it.

I'd love to get back into the European fold. That doesn't have to be rejoin, but its nuts to have self imposed friction in trading for little seeming benefit (I'd argue for either side).

I want to seem extreme politics defeated (both the Reform/Restore racists and the Gays for Gaza communists). As a country we are neither of those things.

And I'd love a bit of peace and quiet.

How long are we giving the honeymoon?

A month? Two months? Over by Xmas?

Where will he struggle?

Areas where Burnham might find it hard to decide and communicate.

Firstly where, for reasons of incentive you have to decide to not give extra money to the poorest because you have to keep it for the rich. (Eg not aligning capital gains and IT/NI rates), and where you have to directly tax people because employment costs are crashing the entry level/low pay jobs market.

Secondly where you can't give extra money to the poorest because the government has cash of minus £3trillion and also needs to spend a trillion more on wars that haven't started and may never.

I think his history and language suggests to socialists that at heart he has a socialist mindset. He is either going to disappoint them, or he is going to disappoint those who live in reality.

It won't be long before the thought sets in that on this very day the public and political class have made an irrevocable decision based on almost zero evidence but an extraordinary surge of zeitgeist about someone the public know almost nothing about.

About that missile strike on the factory in Voronezh that makes microelectronics for Russian missiles...

Ukraine’s General Staff confirms Air Force strikes on a Voronezh plant producing electronics for Russian Iskander and Kh-101 missiles. High-precision air-launched cruise missiles hit the facility, which manufactures transistor assemblies, semiconductor arrays for Iskander-K 9M727 missiles and components for Pantsir-S1 systems.

Voronezh is ~300km from Kharkiv. Range of Storm Shadow is 550km.

I don't know of Ukraine having any other, "High-precision air-launched cruise missiles.." available to it.

Storm Shadow isn’t supposed to be in ‘proper’ Russia. I wonder what they used.

There's a new version in development which is free of US entanglement, so perhaps they're trialling that ?

How long are we giving the honeymoon?

A month? Two months? Over by Xmas?

Where will he struggle?

Areas where Burnham might find it hard to decide and communicate.

Firstly where, for reasons of incentive you have to decide to not give extra money to the poorest because you have to keep it for the rich. (Eg not aligning capital gains and IT/NI rates), and where you have to directly tax people because employment costs are crashing the entry level/low pay jobs market.

Secondly where you can't give extra money to the poorest because the government has cash of minus £3trillion and also needs to spend a trillion more on wars that haven't started and may never.

I think his history and language suggests to socialists that at heart he has a socialist mindset. He is either going to disappoint them, or he is going to disappoint those who live in reality.

It won't be long before the thought sets in that on this very day the public and political class have made an irrevocable decision based on almost zero evidence but an extraordinary surge of zeitgeist about someone the public know almost nothing about.

By repute in Manchester he has been good at getting on with and doing things with opposition parties. I would love to see that continue. I have never thought that to be in opposition should mean opposing everything the government does, yet too often that is what seems to happen.

This country needs to look properly at social care and how we fund health. We need to be serious about trying to balance the books. If you want Scandinavian style social democracy and all the sweeties that leads too, we need to pay the taxes to afford it.

I'd love to get back into the European fold. That doesn't have to be rejoin, but its nuts to have self imposed friction in trading for little seeming benefit (I'd argue for either side).

I want to seem extreme politics defeated (both the Reform/Restore racists and the Gays for Gaza communists). As a country we are neither of those things.

And I'd love a bit of peace and quiet.

May you live in uninteresting times.

I'd love a bit of uninteresting.

Personal life since Jan 2023: birth of first (and so far only) child, loss of mother in law, loss of mother, huge house extension with lots of decorating and decluttering still to do, mother in laws house still to sell...

I had no idea how peaceful things were.