Best Of

5 planes from China have landed altogether in Tehran, now.

Nor part of Israel"s plan.

Just needs the IDF to shoot one of them down for the full 'brace'.

As The Official Keeper Of The PB “Brace”, the decision to deploy it is strictly my own

This is for very good reasons. If everyone chucks out Official PB Braces willynilly, that’s a recipe for chaos and hyperbole

No, a Brace is only deployed in the field after a long, cloistered consultation with my advisors, followed by a Zoom call with the King, the Pope, the project manager of HS2, and the lead archaeologist at Gobekli Tepe

If the emerald light glows green, a procession is made to Sgùrr Alasdair, in the Cuilins of Skye, where, in a cryogenic vault buried beneath 4 million tons of basalt and quartz, the word “Brace!” lies sealed in a crystalline sarcophagus, guarded by “the twelve Tories” - the last of their ancient breed. @HYUFD sometimes pops by

Then, the Keeper of the Syllable - for that is me - approaches the vault and lifts out the Word with platinum tongs, holds it aloft in a silence purer than a Japanese nun on Jersey, and then, finally, the word is typed into Ye Great Annals of PB: Brace! - and the universe shudders

You can’t just say it any old how

It's gabbro and basalt. There's a bit of granite in Coire Uaigneach on Blaven but not much quartz in it.

(The gabbro is grippy as anything. The basalt (eg the In Pinn) will slide you into the abyss).

A gratuitous opportunity for me to post this oil on wood rendering of the Quiraing by my wife.




On sale among many other works at Brockley open studios the weekend after next. https://brockleyopenstudios.co.uk/

I feel like I’m personally surrounded by reasonably comfortable people.

New cars abound. Marks and Spencer Food is crowded with people spending a bit extra for a slightly better product. Holidays are something most people do.

There are the well off. Private schools, a trip to photograph tigers, three months walking in the Japanese mountains. A bit of the Galapagos. Not even bothering to buy houses to support income and investments, but maybe the odd two bedroom jobbie for their children.

And then there are the rich. They don’t get taxed but they do get richer.

I wonder at it all. How have we become so entitled that we are burning through the planet without a care?

And I can’t put car park fees up to subsidise busses because poor people need to leave their car somewhere. And without access to a car they cannot work.


If I ever stood for parliament it would be
Inequality. Inequality. Inequality.
From me.

The top 10% of income earners in the UK pay 60% of income tax now it should be pointed out and the top 1% 29% of income tax

That's the right answer, but, I think, to a different question. That's the answer to 'should the rich pay more tax' - to which I think the answer is 'no', for the reasons you say - and because if we ask them to, they will, very reasonably, either leave or work less.

But if the question is 'is it a well structured society where - for example - the top 10% of income tax earners pay 60% of income tax and the top 1% pay 29% of income tax' - I would argue that the answer is no, probably not. I'd agree with MM's implication that a more equal society would be a better one. But I'd agree with yours that we don't get there simply by increasing taxes on the rich, because that doesn't lead to the outcome we want.

This is a good articulation of my position too. I don't have a solution.

The trouble is without intervention this situation will get worse and worse. Only the top 3 deciles are net fiscal contributors in Scotland. It won't be long before it's the top 2, the top 1...

We can nudge the balance though. Shift the tax/spend balance away from favouring pensioners and towards favouring those working (whether they are rich or not). Greater emphasis on the things which produce growth - education, infrastructure, defence - compared to the things which do not - health, pensions. Stop clobbering those taking risks on starting businesses, and treat SMEs more like wealth generators and less like pariahs. (Gordon Brown - for all his faults - understood this.) And make our cities nicer places to be, because this affects everyone, rich and poor, but the poor have fewer options to buy their way out of their environment.

Health definitely drives growth, at least for working age people* - improve public health and reduce time off work for illness, time off work for caring*, reduced productivity etc. Delays in treatment and lack of prevention must be costing the economy an absolute fortune. The shitiness of CAMHS probably has knock on cost effects in economic inactivity and crime that would far outweigh proper funding.

*lots of working age people have work disrupted/need to reduce etc to care for elderly or otherwise poorly family members and might be more economically productive with better support.

These pro-Palestinian and pro-environmental extremist groups are becoming a distinct threat to the country.

We are at war, and groups like Extinction Rebellion are very much fifth columnists. The sad thing is that many of the 'activists' probably don't even realise it.

Sorry, who are we at war with?

We are in a war with Russia at the moment, and have been for a number of years. It is a Cold War at the moment, and I hope it remains that way, but it is a war nonetheless.

It'll be interesting to look back in a few decades and try to work out when it began: Salisbury, or earlier?

OK, so we're not at war with anyone. We are in a "cold war" (i.e., not an actual war) with Russia.

Russia does spread discord and misinformation in our country, including by supporting environmental groups, as well as supporting Brexit (to try to be on topic for the thread) and alt right groups. I agree with you there. At the same time, one of the things that we have that Russia doesn't is democracy, including the right to protest.

Russia supports discord, they supported the opponents of Brexit and "2nd vote" brigade too.

My belief is that anti-pensioner memes were seeded by Russia – triple lock, pensioners are boomer millionaires, and so on. You see these sentiments too often to be organic or tied to a particular party.

These pro-Palestinian and pro-environmental extremist groups are becoming a distinct threat to the country.

We are at war, and groups like Extinction Rebellion are very much fifth columnists. The sad thing is that many of the 'activists' probably don't even realise it.

Sorry, who are we at war with?

We are in a war with Russia at the moment, and have been for a number of years. It is a Cold War at the moment, and I hope it remains that way, but it is a war nonetheless.

It'll be interesting to look back in a few decades and try to work out when it began: Salisbury, or earlier?

OK, so we're not at war with anyone. We are in a "cold war" (i.e., not an actual war) with Russia.

Russia does spread discord and misinformation in our country, including by supporting environmental groups, as well as supporting Brexit (to try to be on topic for the thread) and alt right groups. I agree with you there. At the same time, one of the things that we have that Russia doesn't is democracy, including the right to protest.

Russia supports discord, they supported the opponents of Brexit and "2nd vote" brigade too.

And Black Lives Matter, and anything else that drives discord.

Yes, I note that @bondegezou only cites right wing causes as being funded/supported by Russia. It is well known they support any cause that fuels rancour in the West, from the Scot Nats to BLM to Islamists to the SuperWoke. They’ve even been known to infiltrate PB. Badly

When someone writes The Decline & Fall of the West, a whole chapter should be written on the brilliant way Russia and China turned liberal democracy against itself, inverted our own Free Speech, and sent in saboteurs via social media

Unfortunately for us, they’ve done it very well

Not saying you're wrong but what's the evidence of China doing a good job of this?

The existence of TikTok ?

These pro-Palestinian and pro-environmental extremist groups are becoming a distinct threat to the country.

We are at war, and groups like Extinction Rebellion are very much fifth columnists. The sad thing is that many of the 'activists' probably don't even realise it.

Sorry, who are we at war with?

We are in a war with Russia at the moment, and have been for a number of years. It is a Cold War at the moment, and I hope it remains that way, but it is a war nonetheless.

It'll be interesting to look back in a few decades and try to work out when it began: Salisbury, or earlier?

OK, so we're not at war with anyone. We are in a "cold war" (i.e., not an actual war) with Russia.

Russia does spread discord and misinformation in our country, including by supporting environmental groups, as well as supporting Brexit (to try to be on topic for the thread) and alt right groups. I agree with you there. At the same time, one of the things that we have that Russia doesn't is democracy, including the right to protest.

Russia supports discord, they supported the opponents of Brexit and "2nd vote" brigade too.

And Black Lives Matter, and anything else that drives discord.

Yes, I note that @bondegezou only cites right wing causes as being funded/supported by Russia. It is well known they support any cause that fuels rancour in the West, from the Scot Nats to BLM to Islamists to the SuperWoke. They’ve even been known to infiltrate PB. Badly

When someone writes The Decline & Fall of the West, a whole chapter should be written on the brilliant way Russia and China turned liberal democracy against itself, inverted our own Free Speech, and sent in saboteurs via social media

Unfortunately for us, they’ve done it very well

Not saying you're wrong but what's the evidence of China doing a good job of this?

The existence of TikTok ?

Yes exactly. Chinese-made TikTok is probably the greatest example of our enemies using our own free speech against us. It’s banned in China FFS

But with TikTok they can manipulate our politics at a distance, as they wish. It’s brilliant - for them