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Natasha Clark
@NatashaC
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1h
Bridget Phillipson tells @AndrewMarr9 @lbc she will go get a T-shirt saying “spiteful class warrior” after her spat with Kemi Badenoch

Badenoch is a nasty piece of work.

John Crace nails it:

https://www.theguardian.com/politics/2026/jun/24/graceless-kemi-badenoch-keir-starmer-pmqs-sketch

"Here was a chance for Kemi Badenoch to show her human side. To give the world a rare sighting of her empathy gene. But Kemi just can’t go there. She can’t read a room. She has only one mode. All-out attack. Other people’s moments of weakness are just material for her to use against them. Even now, she probably thinks she played a blinder at prime minister’s questions. A chance taken to humiliate Keir when he’s down. She has no idea how graceless she is. How charmless. All the more so because she has played no part in Starmer’s resignation. The Conservatives have just been bystanders. There has been no dramatic intervention by Kemi. No set piece in which she has exposed his weakness and forced the issue. Keir’s departure was purely between him and the Labour party. It was Keir’s MPs who had given up on him. No one else. "

"The mad thing is that it would have taken so little for Kemi to have come out of PMQs looking good. In their first exchanges after a Downing Street resignation, it’s customary for the leader of the opposition to say something complimentary about the outgoing prime minister. It doesn’t even have to be very much. She could have said she admired his steadfast support for Ukraine. Or gone for the human touch. That she had enjoyed the conversations they had held in private. Had loved meeting his wife and kids. Wished him all the very best. But Kemi would rather die than do this. She sees kindness as a sign of weakness. It would have cost her what passes for her self-worth. Had she done this – allowed even a forced croak of kindness to escape her lips – then everything that followed would have been OK. Kemi would have bossed the show. As it was, she crashed and burned. Her language becoming progressively more angry and violent the longer she went on. It was the behaviour of a spoiled child. A playground bully whom her party doesn’t dare to call out."

Genuine mystery to me why people rate Badenoch. I can see how they might not notice her incompetence. They're not necessarily paying attention and Badenoch can probably cover up a lot through sheer bluster. But it's baffling to me how they can miss seeing her rudeness and bad behaviour. Most people are polite. No way would they tolerate this kind of aggression in a normal workplace or social situation.

Two things, I reckon.

Kemi is that way because she is our first big party leader to be a social media native. Unfortunately, rudeness is par for the course once you leave the cililised fragrant garden of PB. Out there, upsetting people is a good thing, just so long as it's the right people who get upset. Zack Polanski's remarks on Starmer were equally unclassy. The convention that a new MP praises their predecessor during their maiden speech (whatever they were like) is a good one.

She gets away with it in part because other social media natives approve; they think this is what debate should be like. But also- there's as serious a lack of talent on the Conservative side as on the Labour side. They don't even have any high-profile Mayors that they could parachute into the Conservative leadership.

I don’t think Kemi has yet called someone a wanker and told them to fuck off on social media or in public. Once she gets her teeth into PM Andy it may come of course.

Perhaps Starmer needs to be careful how he signs off.

Foxy

https://www.gov.uk/government/statistics/heat-mortality-monitoring-report-england-2025/heat-mortality-monitoring-report-england-2025

Note that they are talking about episodes where the mean temperature hit… 22 and a bit degrees

And they were noticing deaths in the statistics.

The conclusion that care homes should have air-con is astonishingly obvious

Everywhere should. The government should offer some kind of incentive for domestic houses to install solar panels + aircon as a package.

solar panels + heat pumps please

AC is an air-to-air heat pump.

Previously they only promoted air-to-water heat pumps as an alternative to gas boilers but they're not always suitable for retrofitting as a like-for-like replacement which has damaged their image. The good thing about AC is that it complements whatever else you've got instead of attempting to replace it.

A heat pump is just an AC unit with (a) a variable speed compressor, that can (b) run in reverse and therefore heat as well as cool.

In our flat in London, we put in air conditioning about three years ago. In retrospect, we should have gone with a heat pump. But I guess we were probably about a year too early.

I know I've said it before but our heat pump is keep the house really cool. It's currently 33.7 outside and 23.4 inside; it peaked at 35.7* outside and 24.2 inside.

(*That's an absolute record high for us, not for June but for any month. We've been recording for 16 years.)

They work for well insulated homes that have been designed for them.

Stick them in an average British semi and they'd be shit. The output isn't good enough. They don't heat hot enough fast enough in Winter, and provide enough hot water when you need it, and take ages to cool a house down in the Summer.

The rest is propaganda. They are expensive and a bit shit.

This is why no-one buys one.

That's not true at all. Just more deranged anti-wokism. I used to work in this area, designing heat pump systems for domestic homes. Any house built from 2010 onwards, which is a lot of houses, is suitable. Houses built earlier may be suitable, they may not be. It depends.

At today's energy price cap prices:

Gas 5.74p/kwh
Electric 24.67p/kwh

Gas combi boiler typically better than 92% efficiency.
Thus 1kw of gas boiler output approx 5.74 / 0. 92 = 6.24p
24.67 / 6.24 = 3.95 so for a Heat Pump to be cheaper than gas would require a system COP value greater than 3.95.

Google suggests that's just about achievable with a good system, but a lot of installs won't be getting past 3.0 in typical usage.

So the short answer is - most heat pumps are still more expensive to run than mains gas.

There are a couple side notes to this.

One is that lots of people install heat pumps and report substantial savings. Usually if you ask the pertinent questions, it becomes apparent that the heat pump install included a load of insulation - what is not realised is that the savings are usually all from the insulation.

The other is that if you are willing to go on a time of day/price shifting electric tariff, it's possible for your electricity to cost vastly less than the cap. The snag is that it either means loads of extra cap-ex on a battery, or you get well and truly shafted on the "on peak" electricity price (even if your heat pump only runs on off peak electric, other appliances on your house may be less obliging).

(in our climate, there is a strong anti-synergy with solar panels and heat pumps as solar output is usually dismal in the 3 months of the year you want the heating on) .

As an aside... the COP for air source heat pumps in the UK (where it's not's very cold outside most of the year) is probably 4+ over the year.

So, using the correct price level for natural gas, it's already cheaper than a gas fired combi boiler as far as fuel costs go. That said: given much higher capital costs, it's not worth it unless you want cooling too.

Servicing costs higher for gas too. I would always want a gas boiler serviced every year for safety; ASHPs don't really need servicing, although the suppliers will try to encourage you. It's a glorified fridge after all.

You’d probably want to service them to keep the manufacturer’s warranty though

There's less competition (today) in the servicing air heat pump market, so I'd also expect costs to be a little higher.

Here in LA, we tend to service our air conditioning units every three years or so.

Remember what Pat McFadden said:

Every meeting I have is 'who can we tax in order to pay benefits to others'.

Reeves's parting idea:

22% Charge on interest paid on cash held in non Cash ISAs

Non Cash ISA portfolios made up of 100% cash-like assets will be non-qualifying investments

Restrictions on transfers into cash ISAs

https://www.gov.uk/government/publications/fiscal-events-2026-factsheets/isa-reform-2027-anti-circumvention-rules-factsheet

I am devastated. The 0% I earn on cash in my S&S ISA will be taxed down to 0%.

I’m getting a few percentage on my cash. The cash will be deployed. But this pushes you to be fully invested all the time and reinvest when you get income. Not a fan

I don’t like it but I have to go along with it

(narrator: yes, Viewcode got that reference as well. In the original German)

Get your cash in an MMF Taz, you will get close to 4%

What’s an MMF? (I mean, I know one meaning of MMF, it was a lot of fun and got me to 100%, so to speak. It got all of us to 100%. But there was no cash involved.)

That sounds a lot more interesting than a money market fund

This was Dave at Blair's last PMQs, compare the class oozing from him and the bile from Badenoch.

Tory leader David Cameron: "Can I congratulate him on his achievement in leading his party for 13 years and this country for 10. He has considerable achievements ... we wish him and his family well and every success for whatever he does in the future." Mr Blair replied he had always found Mr Cameron "most proper, correct and courteous in his dealings with me".

Liberal Democrat leader Sir Menzies Campbell: "You have been unfailingly courteous..."

Northern Ireland first minister The Rev Ian Paisley: "I understand that he was downcast many a day, I understand that he was disappointed, understand he was angry, and I understand that perhaps he even lost his temper. But I want to say that he treated me with the greatest of courtesy. I had many things that I disagreed with him on but we faced them."

https://www.theguardian.com/uk/2007/jun/27/politics.tonyblair

Today was not Starmer's last PMQs

He has 2 more and I fully expect on his final one Kemi and the HOC will make their own tributes and he may even get a generous applause

Indeed I hope he does

But surely that wouldn't be "upsetting all the right people", BigG!