However like many such people, it's probably hard to disentangle business from pleasure: e.g. he may go somewhere nice with the kids and have a few meetings, and call it 'working'.
Like Bill Gates reading every line of Microsoft's code, or Steve Jobs designing everything Apple made, it's rubbish.
I know someone that has met him a few times, so I am not sure it is. He is a one off, and not necessarily in a good way.
For a man worth seven trillion dollars, Musk is weirdly and easily annoyed by minor people on Twitter with 6 followers. Quite strange
He is a very weird dude all-round...the few long form interviews he has done with Joe Rogan and Lex Fridman only reinforces that.
Indeed, but we definitely need more Elon Musks in the world.
The Fridman interview especially, is worth watching.
A guy who I shared an office with when doing my PhD was rather similar individual.
On one occasion we had one of the most famous academics in our field come for a visit as they were thinking of changing institutions and a personal friend of our supervisor, and the whole exercise was to butter him up with examples of the interesting work we had been doing.
Academic comes into our lab, asks mini Elon Musk what he had been working on, Mini Elon shows him, world famous academic says interesting, its a bit like my work on such and such, did you try this....Mini Elon sits there in silence for an uncomfortable long time, before telling him to his face his whole research was based upon a flawed premise.
Love it! I have a young relative whom I wonder whether he will become a Musk, though I would probably prefer a Gates (as Gates seems a much nicer guy); he is totally focussed, obsessed about his technology that he has developed and literally works all hours on it. Helps that he is also very clever, and unlike Musk has really good people skills, except when he gets into serious geek mode and doesn't quite realise people are not interested!!
ONS: average age of death from Covid-19 is 82.5 years. This is slightly higher than the average age of deaths from all causes.
Yes, but that ignores the difference between life expectancy at birth, and life expectancy at 82 years, which is not zero.
The suggestion that nearly all who die of covid were in their last days is one of the most offensive of arguments, and actuarially innumerate.
I have no problem with libertarian and other arguments against lockdowns, but trivialising and dismissing covid deaths is horrible.
One part of Foxy's argument is lost on me. LE at 82.5 is not zero. Agreed. (LE at age 112 is not zero either). Nor is LE at the age all the non covid deaths die zero. Everyone dies on a day when their life expectancy, from an actuarial point of view, is more than zero. So what is special about Covid deaths being at a date when LE is not zero, as compared with all the other people who, on average, died younger and on a day when their LE was more than zero?
I think I have now probably exceeded the life expectancy I would have had at birth. I'm older now that all my grandparents were at their deaths, and my father. I have another 10 or so years to live, though, before I'll be older than my mother was when she died. I shall do my best!
“Not really. If you spend money on holidays, for a family, you tend to end up in something like that. Unless you really fight the demand for luxury bathrooms etc.”
+++++
I do not wish to pry into PB-ears private circumstances, but this is an intriguing comment
If you had a family holiday here - the Galle hotel we have been discussing - you’d need three rooms for yourself, one for you and the partner, two for the kids
But let’s budget and say just two rooms, and the kids share
Rooms are £500 a night. That’s £1000 a night. For two weeks that’s £14,000. Add in flights to Sri Lanka, trips, and the rest, and you’re heading for £20,000. For a winter holiday
Exactly how wealthy is the average PB-er?!
Well I push up the average lol.
Good to hear!
I’m quite well off, I guess, but I would blink furiously at dropping £20k on a winter holiday
In my professional capacity for the Knappers Gazette I’ve done trips that would have cost £100,000 for 2 weeks. They were great fun. But they certainly weren’t worth £100,000. I suppose some people are just so rich it doesn’t matter
Spend £100k every two weeks and it adds up to £2.6m in a year, or £26m in a decade.
There have been a few lottery jackpots that would still be left largely intact after that.
The economics of the holiday industry baffle me. I don't feel well-off. But I know what the average family income is, and we earn a fair bit more than that. I usually tick one of the top two boxes in surveys on the 'household income' page. And while I'll never feel entirely comfortable, we're probably top decile for capital. And yet almost all holidays I see advertised are wildly, wildly unaffordable. I consider £3000 for a week away for five towards the upper end of extravagant. Yet almost any foreign family holiday that isn't transparently worse than staying at home seems to be more than this. I simply don't understand how this works. There surely can't be that many people who can afford a holiday like this every year. And don't get me started on Disneyland. Not that I want to go - but I don't see how more than a tiny proportion of the population can ever afford it.
The average family holiday to Spain or France, even in the height of summer, would cost far less than £3,000 probably under £1,000
Well maybe. But just getting four return tickets by air in the school holidays would cost over £1000. There must be cheap holidays out there - or no-one would be able to afford holidays at all. But those that I've seen look awful - at least compared to the option of staying at home. I don't know much about the abroad market. But I know a fair bit about the British market. And it's dashed difficult to get a self-catering place for 5 in the school holidays for much under £1000.
A family holiday in France or Spain for under £1000, for a fortnight, during the school hols? How? Surely impossible, unless you drive and camp or something, and do it mega cheap, buying all your food in the nearest Aldi
How many do that?
I guess for a week at a two star hotel, but even then you’d be hard pushed with a family
2 weeks in Benidorm for 2 adults and 2 children in July for £761 here
However like many such people, it's probably hard to disentangle business from pleasure: e.g. he may go somewhere nice with the kids and have a few meetings, and call it 'working'.
Like Bill Gates reading every line of Microsoft's code, or Steve Jobs designing everything Apple made, it's rubbish.
I know someone that has met him a few times, so I am not sure it is. He is a one off, and not necessarily in a good way.
For a man worth seven trillion dollars, Musk is weirdly and easily annoyed by minor people on Twitter with 6 followers. Quite strange
He is a very weird dude all-round...the few long form interviews he has done with Joe Rogan and Lex Fridman only reinforces that.
Indeed, but we definitely need more Elon Musks in the world.
The Fridman interview especially, is worth watching.
The comments I've had from past colleagues who actually met him, is that there seem to be two Elon's. Bored Elon = Bad Elon. Better Elon is when he has something to do - preferably solving a numerical or physical problem.
Oh wow. Didn’t see these before, there goes my evening
Love what SpaceX are doing, it’s truly groundbreaking work for humanity, the likes of which we last saw in the 1960s.
However like many such people, it's probably hard to disentangle business from pleasure: e.g. he may go somewhere nice with the kids and have a few meetings, and call it 'working'.
Like Bill Gates reading every line of Microsoft's code, or Steve Jobs designing everything Apple made, it's rubbish.
I know someone that has met him a few times, so I am not sure it is. He is a one off, and not necessarily in a good way.
For a man worth seven trillion dollars, Musk is weirdly and easily annoyed by minor people on Twitter with 6 followers. Quite strange
He is a very weird dude all-round...the few long form interviews he has done with Joe Rogan and Lex Fridman only reinforces that.
Indeed, but we definitely need more Elon Musks in the world.
The Fridman interview especially, is worth watching.
A guy who I shared an office with when doing my PhD was rather similar individual.
On one occasion we had one of the most famous academics in our field come for a visit as they were thinking of changing institutions and a personal friend of our supervisor, and the whole exercise was to butter him up with examples of the interesting work we had been doing.
Academic comes into our lab, asks mini Elon Musk what he had been working on, Mini Elon shows him, world famous academic says interesting, its a bit like my work on such and such, did you try this....Mini Elon sits there in silence for an uncomfortable long time, before telling him to his face his whole research was based upon a flawed premise.
Years ago I read a story in a book: annoyingly, I do not know if it was a fictional story or a real one. A maths professor was teaching PhD students at a uni. He had made his name decades before with a theorem. One day, a very bright student asked to have a word with him, and over the course of a few hours comprehensively demolished his theorem.
The professor checked and rechecked, and then broke into tears and said: "Thanks for proving me wrong."
It was used as an example of how academics should be, but rarely are. I wish I remembered where I read it...
“Not really. If you spend money on holidays, for a family, you tend to end up in something like that. Unless you really fight the demand for luxury bathrooms etc.”
+++++
I do not wish to pry into PB-ears private circumstances, but this is an intriguing comment
If you had a family holiday here - the Galle hotel we have been discussing - you’d need three rooms for yourself, one for you and the partner, two for the kids
But let’s budget and say just two rooms, and the kids share
Rooms are £500 a night. That’s £1000 a night. For two weeks that’s £14,000. Add in flights to Sri Lanka, trips, and the rest, and you’re heading for £20,000. For a winter holiday
Exactly how wealthy is the average PB-er?!
Well I push up the average lol.
Good to hear!
I’m quite well off, I guess, but I would blink furiously at dropping £20k on a winter holiday
In my professional capacity for the Knappers Gazette I’ve done trips that would have cost £100,000 for 2 weeks. They were great fun. But they certainly weren’t worth £100,000. I suppose some people are just so rich it doesn’t matter
Spend £100k every two weeks and it adds up to £2.6m in a year, or £26m in a decade.
There have been a few lottery jackpots that would still be left largely intact after that.
The economics of the holiday industry baffle me. I don't feel well-off. But I know what the average family income is, and we earn a fair bit more than that. I usually tick one of the top two boxes in surveys on the 'household income' page. And while I'll never feel entirely comfortable, we're probably top decile for capital. And yet almost all holidays I see advertised are wildly, wildly unaffordable. I consider £3000 for a week away for five towards the upper end of extravagant. Yet almost any foreign family holiday that isn't transparently worse than staying at home seems to be more than this. I simply don't understand how this works. There surely can't be that many people who can afford a holiday like this every year. And don't get me started on Disneyland. Not that I want to go - but I don't see how more than a tiny proportion of the population can ever afford it.
Indeed
The Maldives are particularly nuts. I went there for the Gazette and they are as lovely as everyone says, but they are also ridiculously expensive (certainly the nicer island-hotels). Somewhere like Soneva Fushi. A fortnight there is £30-40k easy for a family.
I presumed I was surrounded by billionaires but there were a lot of Brits who seemed perfectly normal middle class. Lawyers, doctors, what have you
My only explanation is that there is a LOT of inherited wealth in the UK (and elsewhere)
We also didn't pay when we went to the Maldives. The resort was absolutely pristine and we felt very lucky to be there but it is fundamentally just a beach (albeit a very pretty one) and it's not something I would have spent money on. Perhaps the people who pay to go there are those people who write articles in the Telegraph saying they can't afford to live on £100k a year. Some people are just a bit bling.
I guess there's not much point going somewhere like the Maldives if you don't dive
Completely wrong. Famously, the snorkelling in the Maldives is much better than the diving
I have done both, and I promise you you are totally wrong. Snorkelling is great in the Maldives, but nowhere near as good as diving.
For example, being surrounded by mantas circling around you is probably better than going into space (and much cheaper), and you cannot get the same effect snorkelling.
I doubt you even manage to leave the bar.
Er, sorry, I’ve also done both in the Maldives. I dive a fair bit
In terms of bang per buck, rewards received for effort made, the snorkeling is far superior. On a good reef you just have to dip your head in the water and you are surrounded by billions of fish. It is surreally good. The best snorkelling in the world? Certainly up there
Diving in the Maldives is good but not world class. And you have all the bloody effort that goes with diving
I have done both too, albeit not in the Maldives.
I prefer snorkelling. The vast majority of the interest is in the top 10 meters as light dependent, and the freedom of snorkelling much nicer than the claustrophobia of diving kit, but that is a personal thing really. Once below 10 meters the risks go up and the interest goes down.
So we have a situation where the Met are saying it's only penalty notices, and the former DPP Macdonald ( and Starmer, it looks like ) both seem to think what is going on makes no sense, in that case.
Just what exactly is going on ?
I suspect the Met are going through everything with a fine-tooth comb. There’s a serious risk of them taking a beating from all sides if they even slightly fuck this one up.
“Not really. If you spend money on holidays, for a family, you tend to end up in something like that. Unless you really fight the demand for luxury bathrooms etc.”
+++++
I do not wish to pry into PB-ears private circumstances, but this is an intriguing comment
If you had a family holiday here - the Galle hotel we have been discussing - you’d need three rooms for yourself, one for you and the partner, two for the kids
But let’s budget and say just two rooms, and the kids share
Rooms are £500 a night. That’s £1000 a night. For two weeks that’s £14,000. Add in flights to Sri Lanka, trips, and the rest, and you’re heading for £20,000. For a winter holiday
Exactly how wealthy is the average PB-er?!
Well I push up the average lol.
Good to hear!
I’m quite well off, I guess, but I would blink furiously at dropping £20k on a winter holiday
In my professional capacity for the Knappers Gazette I’ve done trips that would have cost £100,000 for 2 weeks. They were great fun. But they certainly weren’t worth £100,000. I suppose some people are just so rich it doesn’t matter
Spend £100k every two weeks and it adds up to £2.6m in a year, or £26m in a decade.
There have been a few lottery jackpots that would still be left largely intact after that.
The economics of the holiday industry baffle me. I don't feel well-off. But I know what the average family income is, and we earn a fair bit more than that. I usually tick one of the top two boxes in surveys on the 'household income' page. And while I'll never feel entirely comfortable, we're probably top decile for capital. And yet almost all holidays I see advertised are wildly, wildly unaffordable. I consider £3000 for a week away for five towards the upper end of extravagant. Yet almost any foreign family holiday that isn't transparently worse than staying at home seems to be more than this. I simply don't understand how this works. There surely can't be that many people who can afford a holiday like this every year. And don't get me started on Disneyland. Not that I want to go - but I don't see how more than a tiny proportion of the population can ever afford it.
The average family holiday to Spain or France, even in the height of summer, would cost far less than £3,000 probably under £1,000
Well maybe. But just getting four return tickets by air in the school holidays would cost over £1000. There must be cheap holidays out there - or no-one would be able to afford holidays at all. But those that I've seen look awful - at least compared to the option of staying at home. I don't know much about the abroad market. But I know a fair bit about the British market. And it's dashed difficult to get a self-catering place for 5 in the school holidays for much under £1000.
A family holiday in France or Spain for under £1000, for a fortnight, during the school hols? How? Surely impossible, unless you drive and camp or something, and do it mega cheap, buying all your food in the nearest Aldi
How many do that?
I guess for a week at a two star hotel, but even then you’d be hard pushed with a family
Even if you drive, the ferry costs at that time push the bill up quite steeply. The overnight from Portsmouth to St Malo is really convenient and great fun (especially with a few friends' families) but costs a few bob in the school holidays. More than flying, although you then save on the car hire.
Maybe @Leon could write an article on it. Take some nephews or nieces (none over 16) on a camping trip to Normandy on a budget. Now that would really be something to brag about!
89K Covid cases. Down about 6K on last week. 2 days in a row where the cases have been lower than the week before. Hopefully this is a sign that cases will now run down further.
All other key metrics are down. Everything heading in the right direction!
Deepti Gurdasani @dgurdasani1 · 1h Sorry, just deleted and repost this thread due to an important error- the frequency of omicron BA.2 in England as per the ONS report of 19th Jan was 5.5%, *not* 22%. The rest of the thread is the same.
“Not really. If you spend money on holidays, for a family, you tend to end up in something like that. Unless you really fight the demand for luxury bathrooms etc.”
+++++
I do not wish to pry into PB-ears private circumstances, but this is an intriguing comment
If you had a family holiday here - the Galle hotel we have been discussing - you’d need three rooms for yourself, one for you and the partner, two for the kids
But let’s budget and say just two rooms, and the kids share
Rooms are £500 a night. That’s £1000 a night. For two weeks that’s £14,000. Add in flights to Sri Lanka, trips, and the rest, and you’re heading for £20,000. For a winter holiday
Exactly how wealthy is the average PB-er?!
Well I push up the average lol.
Good to hear!
I’m quite well off, I guess, but I would blink furiously at dropping £20k on a winter holiday
In my professional capacity for the Knappers Gazette I’ve done trips that would have cost £100,000 for 2 weeks. They were great fun. But they certainly weren’t worth £100,000. I suppose some people are just so rich it doesn’t matter
Spend £100k every two weeks and it adds up to £2.6m in a year, or £26m in a decade.
There have been a few lottery jackpots that would still be left largely intact after that.
The economics of the holiday industry baffle me. I don't feel well-off. But I know what the average family income is, and we earn a fair bit more than that. I usually tick one of the top two boxes in surveys on the 'household income' page. And while I'll never feel entirely comfortable, we're probably top decile for capital. And yet almost all holidays I see advertised are wildly, wildly unaffordable. I consider £3000 for a week away for five towards the upper end of extravagant. Yet almost any foreign family holiday that isn't transparently worse than staying at home seems to be more than this. I simply don't understand how this works. There surely can't be that many people who can afford a holiday like this every year. And don't get me started on Disneyland. Not that I want to go - but I don't see how more than a tiny proportion of the population can ever afford it.
The average family holiday to Spain or France, even in the height of summer, would cost far less than £3,000 probably under £1,000
Well maybe. But just getting four return tickets by air in the school holidays would cost over £1000. There must be cheap holidays out there - or no-one would be able to afford holidays at all. But those that I've seen look awful - at least compared to the option of staying at home. I don't know much about the abroad market. But I know a fair bit about the British market. And it's dashed difficult to get a self-catering place for 5 in the school holidays for much under £1000.
A family holiday in France or Spain for under £1000, for a fortnight, during the school hols? How? Surely impossible, unless you drive and camp or something, and do it mega cheap, buying all your food in the nearest Aldi
How many do that?
I guess for a week at a two star hotel, but even then you’d be hard pushed with a family
2 weeks in Benidorm for 2 adults and 2 children in July for £761 here
So we have a situation where the Met are saying it's only penalty notices, and the former DPP Macdonald ( and Starmer, it looks like ) both seem to think what is going on makes no sense, in that case.
Just what exactly is going on ?
What is going on is a high level exercise in delay, complexification and confusion. The intention is that everyone over time gets lost and bored in the detail and delay, and that such blame as there is finally is dispersed in so many directions that the tiger is tamed.
There is no intention left. Johnson knows Gray sinks him and is in a cornered rat frenzy. That's all there is to it. Public anger will mount to a stage where something gives.
“Not really. If you spend money on holidays, for a family, you tend to end up in something like that. Unless you really fight the demand for luxury bathrooms etc.”
+++++
I do not wish to pry into PB-ears private circumstances, but this is an intriguing comment
If you had a family holiday here - the Galle hotel we have been discussing - you’d need three rooms for yourself, one for you and the partner, two for the kids
But let’s budget and say just two rooms, and the kids share
Rooms are £500 a night. That’s £1000 a night. For two weeks that’s £14,000. Add in flights to Sri Lanka, trips, and the rest, and you’re heading for £20,000. For a winter holiday
Exactly how wealthy is the average PB-er?!
Well I push up the average lol.
Good to hear!
I’m quite well off, I guess, but I would blink furiously at dropping £20k on a winter holiday
In my professional capacity for the Knappers Gazette I’ve done trips that would have cost £100,000 for 2 weeks. They were great fun. But they certainly weren’t worth £100,000. I suppose some people are just so rich it doesn’t matter
Spend £100k every two weeks and it adds up to £2.6m in a year, or £26m in a decade.
There have been a few lottery jackpots that would still be left largely intact after that.
The economics of the holiday industry baffle me. I don't feel well-off. But I know what the average family income is, and we earn a fair bit more than that. I usually tick one of the top two boxes in surveys on the 'household income' page. And while I'll never feel entirely comfortable, we're probably top decile for capital. And yet almost all holidays I see advertised are wildly, wildly unaffordable. I consider £3000 for a week away for five towards the upper end of extravagant. Yet almost any foreign family holiday that isn't transparently worse than staying at home seems to be more than this. I simply don't understand how this works. There surely can't be that many people who can afford a holiday like this every year. And don't get me started on Disneyland. Not that I want to go - but I don't see how more than a tiny proportion of the population can ever afford it.
The average family holiday to Spain or France, even in the height of summer, would cost far less than £3,000 probably under £1,000
Well maybe. But just getting four return tickets by air in the school holidays would cost over £1000. There must be cheap holidays out there - or no-one would be able to afford holidays at all. But those that I've seen look awful - at least compared to the option of staying at home. I don't know much about the abroad market. But I know a fair bit about the British market. And it's dashed difficult to get a self-catering place for 5 in the school holidays for much under £1000.
A family holiday in France or Spain for under £1000, for a fortnight, during the school hols? How? Surely impossible, unless you drive and camp or something, and do it mega cheap, buying all your food in the nearest Aldi
How many do that?
I guess for a week at a two star hotel, but even then you’d be hard pushed with a family
2 weeks in Benidorm for 2 adults and 2 children in July for £761 here
I think Rishi has blown it. Like Michael Portillo and David Miliband before him, he'll been seen as a politician who had the great prize within his grasp but wibbled.
Spot on, in the end Portillo failed to oust Major and Miliband failed to oust Brown and neither either ended up leaders of their party, loosing to IDS in 2001 and Ed Miliband in 2010 respectively.
Though Portillo has had a successful post politics career doing rail programmes and Miliband is head of international rescue in Manhattan so all not lost for Sunak longer term.
I wouldn't get too excited that your idol is in the clear. Whether it is Sunak or someone else, The Clown will not last past June IMO. There is just too much on him, and the vultures are just holding off until he is a little more wounded.
My humble prediction is that the drip drip of allegations and insinuations will ensure he ends up with a terrible result in May. MPs in more marginal constituencies will apply the swing to their GE result and take action. Whether it will be too late to prevent a Labour win at the next GE is open to conjecture.
As long as polls continue to show a hung parliament and a Labour lead under 10% and as long as the Tories hold Westminster and Kensington and Chelsea in May and as long as the Met and Gray inquiries find Boris did not do anything criminal. Then I predict Boris will still be PM and lead the Tories at the next general election
Hung Parliament on under 10% Labour lead?
Write out 100 times "Uniform National Swing does not work in the grand scheme of United Kingdom General Elections".
It does, on UNS
I'll stop you there and repeat the post you're replying to because obviously you haven't read it or haven't understood it.
Uniform National Swing does not work in the grand scheme of United Kingdom General Elections.
Now take the rest of the day off.
Clearly neither of you have bothered to read the rest of my post 'Plus Starmer Labour is still not seen as as centrist as Blair's New Labour by the middle classes, even if not as bad as Corbyn Labour. So while they might tactically vote LD, they are much less likely to tactically vote Labour.
Compare too the by election results in North Shropshire and Chesham and Amersham where the LDs were challengers and won with Old Bexley and Sidcup where Labour were challengers and the Tories held on'
There has been no repeal Clause 4 moment from Starmer, no real attempt to go all out to the centre as Blair did and Starmer also has zero charisma unlike Blair. There will be far less tactical voting for Labour next time than there was in 1997, even if there is tactical voting for the LDs.
So I repeat, Labour is still a million miles from a majority and will be unless it either regains most of the seats it lost to the SNP in Scotland or goes much more to the centre a la New Labour pre 1997
Where you may be wrong again in your analysis referencing 1997 is this: No there has been no clause 4 moment, but there have been multiple Boris Johnson moments which might have the same effect.
I am of an age and in a financial position where it makes no real odds to me if Labour or the Conservatives win the next election. I would have supported any party of rejoin, but as they no longer exist that is not something I need worry about.
Sunak, Hunt, Tugendhat, Starmer, I can live with any of them, but Johnson? A man I have a burning desire to depose because of his Brexit lies, his shameful misogyny, his lazy incompetence as Foreign Secretary, his casual ignorance of Northern Ireland, his shameful begging for money (hi, Lulu Lytle)his prorogation of parliament, his lies to the monarch, his misleading of parliament, his kneejerk reactions to personal political crisis, the charge list goes on and on, notwithstanding his parties whilst we all locked down.
I believe he has sold my proud nation down the river on a raft of false narratives in order to self-aggrandise Boris Johnson, and for no other function. I suspect I am not alone, and people like me will think incredibly carefully where to put our cross on election day to punish this scoundrel. Anyone but Boris, UNS indeed!
Great post. I feel much the same, except I am still suspicious of a Labour government, though I am beginning to think they cannot be worse than this one while it is led by a clown. I think when people like me (I used to be a Tory activist only 10 years ago ffs) think like this, I would not be surprised to see a Labour majority
I could never see myself ever voting Conservative, and I never have, although I have voted for pretty much everything else. I was a New Labour activist, and Iraq apart I have no regrets. In 2019 given the choice of Tugendhat or Corbyn I could have happily voted for Tugendhat's Conservatives. That wasn't an option I had in 2019 and I knew a Johnson landslide was far more dangerous than a Corbyn minority (and I had Brexit to worry about). I am a socially and fiscally left wing centrist, not a believer in big state, but a supporter of genuine meritocratic opportunities for all, I do not advocate an effort free social security system, so a benevolent feudal Tory, one nation Conservative Party is not a million miles from me.
I have no doubt if you voted Labour, over time they would disappoint, however in the here and now you have to consider the best way to get back a Conservative Party you could comfortably support. Corbyn getting pasted in 2019 has left me with a Labour Party I am much more comfortable with in just two years, but it wasn't all about getting rid of just Corbyn, but also the hateful leeches backing him, and that is still very much work in progress. You still have, even with Johnson gone, a cabal of hateful, malevolent right wing populists who could easily retake control of your party, even after Johnson is deposed. These clowns needs their political teeth extracting too, before you once again have the Tory Party of Ted Heath or McMillan.
Yep, but as an optimist I have to hope that sanity might return!
A fruitless search for sanity on the evidence of the last weeks. A cold, heartless, lying Charlatan emboldened by handwringing Centrist Tories. To their credit, Andrew Bridgen and Co. are the only ones who have seen through Johnson's new clothes.
So we have a situation where the Met are saying it's only penalty notices, and the former DPP Macdonald ( and Starmer, it looks like ) both seem to think what is going on makes no sense, in that case.
Just what exactly is going on ?
I suspect the Met are going through everything with a fine-tooth comb. There’s a serious risk of them taking a beating from all sides if they even slightly fuck this one up.
The former DPP's, as well several other lawyers today, don't seem to think that makes any sense. It could be incredibly politically useful to go through it so slowly the comb has only finished its first page next year though, one has to think.
“Not really. If you spend money on holidays, for a family, you tend to end up in something like that. Unless you really fight the demand for luxury bathrooms etc.”
+++++
I do not wish to pry into PB-ears private circumstances, but this is an intriguing comment
If you had a family holiday here - the Galle hotel we have been discussing - you’d need three rooms for yourself, one for you and the partner, two for the kids
But let’s budget and say just two rooms, and the kids share
Rooms are £500 a night. That’s £1000 a night. For two weeks that’s £14,000. Add in flights to Sri Lanka, trips, and the rest, and you’re heading for £20,000. For a winter holiday
Exactly how wealthy is the average PB-er?!
Well I push up the average lol.
Good to hear!
I’m quite well off, I guess, but I would blink furiously at dropping £20k on a winter holiday
In my professional capacity for the Knappers Gazette I’ve done trips that would have cost £100,000 for 2 weeks. They were great fun. But they certainly weren’t worth £100,000. I suppose some people are just so rich it doesn’t matter
Spend £100k every two weeks and it adds up to £2.6m in a year, or £26m in a decade.
There have been a few lottery jackpots that would still be left largely intact after that.
The economics of the holiday industry baffle me. I don't feel well-off. But I know what the average family income is, and we earn a fair bit more than that. I usually tick one of the top two boxes in surveys on the 'household income' page. And while I'll never feel entirely comfortable, we're probably top decile for capital. And yet almost all holidays I see advertised are wildly, wildly unaffordable. I consider £3000 for a week away for five towards the upper end of extravagant. Yet almost any foreign family holiday that isn't transparently worse than staying at home seems to be more than this. I simply don't understand how this works. There surely can't be that many people who can afford a holiday like this every year. And don't get me started on Disneyland. Not that I want to go - but I don't see how more than a tiny proportion of the population can ever afford it.
The average family holiday to Spain or France, even in the height of summer, would cost far less than £3,000 probably under £1,000
Well maybe. But just getting four return tickets by air in the school holidays would cost over £1000. There must be cheap holidays out there - or no-one would be able to afford holidays at all. But those that I've seen look awful - at least compared to the option of staying at home. I don't know much about the abroad market. But I know a fair bit about the British market. And it's dashed difficult to get a self-catering place for 5 in the school holidays for much under £1000.
A family holiday in France or Spain for under £1000, for a fortnight, during the school hols? How? Surely impossible, unless you drive and camp or something, and do it mega cheap, buying all your food in the nearest Aldi
How many do that?
I guess for a week at a two star hotel, but even then you’d be hard pushed with a family
Even if you drive, the ferry costs at that time push the bill up quite steeply. The overnight from Portsmouth to St Malo is really convenient and great fun (especially with a few friends' families) but costs a few bob in the school holidays. More than flying, although you then save on the car hire.
Maybe @Leon could write an article on it. Take some nephews or nieces (none over 16) on a camping trip to Normandy on a budget. Now that would really be something to brag about!
Sylvie from Emily in Paris (a much underrated satire of French life!!) describes Normandy as "the worst region in France – apple cider and damp beaches"
So we have a situation where the Met are saying it's only penalty notices, and the former DPP Macdonald ( and Starmer, it looks like ) both seem to think what is going on makes no sense, in that case.
Just what exactly is going on ?
I suspect the Met are going through everything with a fine-tooth comb. There’s a serious risk of them taking a beating from all sides if they even slightly fuck this one up.
They have already fucked it up to an 11 on a scale 1-10.
So we have a situation where the Met are saying it's only penalty notices, and the former DPP Macdonald ( and Starmer, it looks like ) both seem to think what is going on makes no sense, in that case.
Just what exactly is going on ?
I suspect the Met are going through everything with a fine-tooth comb. There’s a serious risk of them taking a beating from all sides if they even slightly fuck this one up.
They have already fucked it up to an 11 on a scale 1-10.
Presumably Dick has set them a stretch target of limiting the FUBAR to 15/10.
Yes, Sunak is increasingly looking like the Tory David Miliband.
Miliband was unable to force Brown out pre 2010 as Sunak is unable to force Boris out now. In the end Miliband not only failed to become PM he even failed to become Leader of the Opposition after his brother beat him for the leadership after Labour lost power
Reports he's Brexiteer in name only. Instrumental in blocking Article Sixteen trigger. Insisting on the highest tax rates in 70 years.
GAME OVER.
He has been an enthusiastic Brexiteer since his teens, so he's very definitely a believer.
Yes that’s a curiously obvious lie. He was a vocally eurosceptic SCHOOLBOY. All this is on record
Therefore this sounds like some clumsy attempt to smear him by Borisovians
Thing is he looks like a Remainer - wealthy, cosmopolitan, financial background. So it's a good smear for Boris to set in motion. Ironic that the tactic you suggested be used against Sir Keir is now being used by Leavers against one of their own.
I confess i was a bit surprised when I read that he was a convinced Brexiteer. However, he is ENORMOUSLY wealthy. I have noted that the rich and super-rich are much more Brexity than the merely affluent, who are generally Remainer if not Remoaner
I recall a birthday party a few weeks before the referendum where the room contained about 5 people in the top 100 Sunday Times wealthiest people thing. All were Leave
True, however there are different ways of Being Brexit.
Crudely, there are those who really want a lot more globalisation- to take their squillions wherever and however they like, for whom Europe is too small a stage. Set against them, there are those who want a lot less globalisation- fewer foreign faces and voices, bring all the factories back to Britain, preferably to Mytown. Somewhere in the middle, you have the Boris types- don't care what happens really, as long as they are unambiguously in charge.
Sunak and others in the super-rich appear in the first category. But there aren't many of them. To get anywhere near 52%, you need those who want to pull up the drawbridge. Only disadvantage of this approach is that you're stuffed when you try to chart a path afterwards.
The Brexit Rishi believes in isn't the same one Boris believes in. So who is the guardian of the True Brexit?
True
But who is the guardian of the true EU, the one that won’t march on to ever closer union, slowly leeching powers from the member states?
No one, that’s who. Because it does not exist. The EU is inexorably federalizing, Cameron’s renegotiation failure proved this. We are better off out, because we would have been increasingly unhappy in a Federal EU, yet unable to stop it
Oh God, you were actually interesting before you returned to type. Brexit is over. You got it. It was a con, but you won. Now stop fecking going on about it.
“Not really. If you spend money on holidays, for a family, you tend to end up in something like that. Unless you really fight the demand for luxury bathrooms etc.”
+++++
I do not wish to pry into PB-ears private circumstances, but this is an intriguing comment
If you had a family holiday here - the Galle hotel we have been discussing - you’d need three rooms for yourself, one for you and the partner, two for the kids
But let’s budget and say just two rooms, and the kids share
Rooms are £500 a night. That’s £1000 a night. For two weeks that’s £14,000. Add in flights to Sri Lanka, trips, and the rest, and you’re heading for £20,000. For a winter holiday
Exactly how wealthy is the average PB-er?!
Well I push up the average lol.
Good to hear!
I’m quite well off, I guess, but I would blink furiously at dropping £20k on a winter holiday
In my professional capacity for the Knappers Gazette I’ve done trips that would have cost £100,000 for 2 weeks. They were great fun. But they certainly weren’t worth £100,000. I suppose some people are just so rich it doesn’t matter
Spend £100k every two weeks and it adds up to £2.6m in a year, or £26m in a decade.
There have been a few lottery jackpots that would still be left largely intact after that.
The economics of the holiday industry baffle me. I don't feel well-off. But I know what the average family income is, and we earn a fair bit more than that. I usually tick one of the top two boxes in surveys on the 'household income' page. And while I'll never feel entirely comfortable, we're probably top decile for capital. And yet almost all holidays I see advertised are wildly, wildly unaffordable. I consider £3000 for a week away for five towards the upper end of extravagant. Yet almost any foreign family holiday that isn't transparently worse than staying at home seems to be more than this. I simply don't understand how this works. There surely can't be that many people who can afford a holiday like this every year. And don't get me started on Disneyland. Not that I want to go - but I don't see how more than a tiny proportion of the population can ever afford it.
The average family holiday to Spain or France, even in the height of summer, would cost far less than £3,000 probably under £1,000
Well maybe. But just getting four return tickets by air in the school holidays would cost over £1000. There must be cheap holidays out there - or no-one would be able to afford holidays at all. But those that I've seen look awful - at least compared to the option of staying at home. I don't know much about the abroad market. But I know a fair bit about the British market. And it's dashed difficult to get a self-catering place for 5 in the school holidays for much under £1000.
A family holiday in France or Spain for under £1000, for a fortnight, during the school hols? How? Surely impossible, unless you drive and camp or something, and do it mega cheap, buying all your food in the nearest Aldi
How many do that?
I guess for a week at a two star hotel, but even then you’d be hard pushed with a family
Before you have school-aged children, so long as you don't mind booking in advance, it's easy enough. But once you try and cram into the same six week period as everyone else, it becomes close to impossible.
Driving becomes the only way you might be able to make it work.
Yes, Sunak is increasingly looking like the Tory David Miliband.
Miliband was unable to force Brown out pre 2010 as Sunak is unable to force Boris out now. In the end Miliband not only failed to become PM he even failed to become Leader of the Opposition after his brother beat him for the leadership after Labour lost power
Reports he's Brexiteer in name only. Instrumental in blocking Article Sixteen trigger. Insisting on the highest tax rates in 70 years.
GAME OVER.
He has been an enthusiastic Brexiteer since his teens, so he's very definitely a believer.
Yes that’s a curiously obvious lie. He was a vocally eurosceptic SCHOOLBOY. All this is on record
Therefore this sounds like some clumsy attempt to smear him by Borisovians
Thing is he looks like a Remainer - wealthy, cosmopolitan, financial background. So it's a good smear for Boris to set in motion. Ironic that the tactic you suggested be used against Sir Keir is now being used by Leavers against one of their own.
I confess i was a bit surprised when I read that he was a convinced Brexiteer. However, he is ENORMOUSLY wealthy. I have noted that the rich and super-rich are much more Brexity than the merely affluent, who are generally Remainer if not Remoaner
I recall a birthday party a few weeks before the referendum where the room contained about 5 people in the top 100 Sunday Times wealthiest people thing. All were Leave
True, however there are different ways of Being Brexit.
Crudely, there are those who really want a lot more globalisation- to take their squillions wherever and however they like, for whom Europe is too small a stage. Set against them, there are those who want a lot less globalisation- fewer foreign faces and voices, bring all the factories back to Britain, preferably to Mytown. Somewhere in the middle, you have the Boris types- don't care what happens really, as long as they are unambiguously in charge.
Sunak and others in the super-rich appear in the first category. But there aren't many of them. To get anywhere near 52%, you need those who want to pull up the drawbridge. Only disadvantage of this approach is that you're stuffed when you try to chart a path afterwards.
The Brexit Rishi believes in isn't the same one Boris believes in. So who is the guardian of the True Brexit?
True
But who is the guardian of the true EU, the one that won’t march on to ever closer union, slowly leeching powers from the member states?
No one, that’s who. Because it does not exist. The EU is inexorably federalizing, Cameron’s renegotiation failure proved this. We are better off out, because we would have been increasingly unhappy in a Federal EU, yet unable to stop it
Oh God, you were actually interesting before you returned to type. Brexit is over. You got it. It was a con, but you won. Now stop fecking going on about it.
I much prefer a gentle thesis on the benefits of Brexit than the anti-wokery rants or the expert analysis of all things ASD.
So we have a situation where the Met are saying it's only penalty notices, and the former DPP Macdonald ( and Starmer, it looks like ) both seem to think what is going on makes no sense, in that case.
Just what exactly is going on ?
I suspect the Met are going through everything with a fine-tooth comb. There’s a serious risk of them taking a beating from all sides if they even slightly fuck this one up.
They have already fucked it up to an 11 on a scale 1-10.
The behaviour of the number 10 police, to me, indicates a fundamental desire to avoid getting drawn into political rows. They’ve ended up creating the very problem they were hoping to avoid.
Johnson must be feeling more confident of escaping the 54 letters, he seems to pressing ahead with the NI rise.
Another nail. My prediction/guess that he will be gone after the May locals looks more likely. Not sure I need to be looking up a hair shirt in medium to wear for all July after all.
So we have a situation where the Met are saying it's only penalty notices, and the former DPP Macdonald ( and Starmer, it looks like ) both seem to think what is going on makes no sense, in that case.
Just what exactly is going on ?
I suspect the Met are going through everything with a fine-tooth comb. There’s a serious risk of them taking a beating from all sides if they even slightly fuck this one up.
They have already fucked it up to an 11 on a scale 1-10.
However like many such people, it's probably hard to disentangle business from pleasure: e.g. he may go somewhere nice with the kids and have a few meetings, and call it 'working'.
Like Bill Gates reading every line of Microsoft's code, or Steve Jobs designing everything Apple made, it's rubbish.
I know someone that has met him a few times, so I am not sure it is. He is a one off, and not necessarily in a good way.
For a man worth seven trillion dollars, Musk is weirdly and easily annoyed by minor people on Twitter with 6 followers. Quite strange
He is a very weird dude all-round...the few long form interviews he has done with Joe Rogan and Lex Fridman only reinforces that.
Indeed, but we definitely need more Elon Musks in the world.
The Fridman interview especially, is worth watching.
A guy who I shared an office with when doing my PhD was rather similar individual.
On one occasion we had one of the most famous academics in our field come for a visit as they were thinking of changing institutions and a personal friend of our supervisor, and the whole exercise was to butter him up with examples of the interesting work we had been doing.
Academic comes into our lab, asks mini Elon Musk what he had been working on, Mini Elon shows him, world famous academic says interesting, its a bit like my work on such and such, did you try this....Mini Elon sits there in silence for an uncomfortable long time, before telling him to his face his whole research was based upon a flawed premise.
Love it! I have a young relative whom I wonder whether he will become a Musk, though I would probably prefer a Gates (as Gates seems a much nicer guy); he is totally focussed, obsessed about his technology that he has developed and literally works all hours on it. Helps that he is also very clever, and unlike Musk has really good people skills, except when he gets into serious geek mode and doesn't quite realise people are not interested!!
I've worked with some really intelligent people (including, I have to say, Mrs J (*)). Most of them have made a comfortable or more than comfortable living, but few have become rich, yet alone massively rich.
The problem is it takes so many things aside from just intelligence and a great work habit: for instance, I have a rather low risk-taking mindset which means there's no way I'd take some of the insane gambles Musk took with his first minor fortune. Then there's luck and opportunity. Or Job's Reality Distortion Field.
I think you also need to be a sh*t at times. Jobs certainly was, Musk was, and even Gates was at times - e.g. the way he treated Paul Allen over shares.
Johnson must be feeling more confident of escaping the 54 letters, he seems to pressing ahead with the NI rise.
Another nail. My prediction/guess that he will be gone after the May locals looks more likely. Not sure I need to be looking up a hair shirt in medium to wear for all July after all.
I think you should book the tailors for that fitting. Big Dog is going nowhere.
However like many such people, it's probably hard to disentangle business from pleasure: e.g. he may go somewhere nice with the kids and have a few meetings, and call it 'working'.
Like Bill Gates reading every line of Microsoft's code, or Steve Jobs designing everything Apple made, it's rubbish.
I know someone that has met him a few times, so I am not sure it is. He is a one off, and not necessarily in a good way.
For a man worth seven trillion dollars, Musk is weirdly and easily annoyed by minor people on Twitter with 6 followers. Quite strange
He is a very weird dude all-round...the few long form interviews he has done with Joe Rogan and Lex Fridman only reinforces that.
Indeed, but we definitely need more Elon Musks in the world.
The Fridman interview especially, is worth watching.
The comments I've had from past colleagues who actually met him, is that there seem to be two Elon's. Bored Elon = Bad Elon. Better Elon is when he has something to do - preferably solving a numerical or physical problem.
Oh wow. Didn’t see these before, there goes my evening
Love what SpaceX are doing, it’s truly groundbreaking work for humanity, the likes of which we last saw in the 1960s.
Tim Dodd (the Everyday Astronaut) is generally excellent.
“Not really. If you spend money on holidays, for a family, you tend to end up in something like that. Unless you really fight the demand for luxury bathrooms etc.”
+++++
I do not wish to pry into PB-ears private circumstances, but this is an intriguing comment
If you had a family holiday here - the Galle hotel we have been discussing - you’d need three rooms for yourself, one for you and the partner, two for the kids
But let’s budget and say just two rooms, and the kids share
Rooms are £500 a night. That’s £1000 a night. For two weeks that’s £14,000. Add in flights to Sri Lanka, trips, and the rest, and you’re heading for £20,000. For a winter holiday
Exactly how wealthy is the average PB-er?!
Well I push up the average lol.
Good to hear!
I’m quite well off, I guess, but I would blink furiously at dropping £20k on a winter holiday
In my professional capacity for the Knappers Gazette I’ve done trips that would have cost £100,000 for 2 weeks. They were great fun. But they certainly weren’t worth £100,000. I suppose some people are just so rich it doesn’t matter
Spend £100k every two weeks and it adds up to £2.6m in a year, or £26m in a decade.
There have been a few lottery jackpots that would still be left largely intact after that.
The economics of the holiday industry baffle me. I don't feel well-off. But I know what the average family income is, and we earn a fair bit more than that. I usually tick one of the top two boxes in surveys on the 'household income' page. And while I'll never feel entirely comfortable, we're probably top decile for capital. And yet almost all holidays I see advertised are wildly, wildly unaffordable. I consider £3000 for a week away for five towards the upper end of extravagant. Yet almost any foreign family holiday that isn't transparently worse than staying at home seems to be more than this. I simply don't understand how this works. There surely can't be that many people who can afford a holiday like this every year. And don't get me started on Disneyland. Not that I want to go - but I don't see how more than a tiny proportion of the population can ever afford it.
The average family holiday to Spain or France, even in the height of summer, would cost far less than £3,000 probably under £1,000
Well maybe. But just getting four return tickets by air in the school holidays would cost over £1000. There must be cheap holidays out there - or no-one would be able to afford holidays at all. But those that I've seen look awful - at least compared to the option of staying at home. I don't know much about the abroad market. But I know a fair bit about the British market. And it's dashed difficult to get a self-catering place for 5 in the school holidays for much under £1000.
A family holiday in France or Spain for under £1000, for a fortnight, during the school hols? How? Surely impossible, unless you drive and camp or something, and do it mega cheap, buying all your food in the nearest Aldi
How many do that?
I guess for a week at a two star hotel, but even then you’d be hard pushed with a family
Even if you drive, the ferry costs at that time push the bill up quite steeply. The overnight from Portsmouth to St Malo is really convenient and great fun (especially with a few friends' families) but costs a few bob in the school holidays. More than flying, although you then save on the car hire.
Maybe @Leon could write an article on it. Take some nephews or nieces (none over 16) on a camping trip to Normandy on a budget. Now that would really be something to brag about!
A very quick check on Jet2 tells me that the cheapest I can do 1 week in Spain in August is £1724 and that's self catering in a 1 bed apartment in Benidorm.
“Not really. If you spend money on holidays, for a family, you tend to end up in something like that. Unless you really fight the demand for luxury bathrooms etc.”
+++++
I do not wish to pry into PB-ears private circumstances, but this is an intriguing comment
If you had a family holiday here - the Galle hotel we have been discussing - you’d need three rooms for yourself, one for you and the partner, two for the kids
But let’s budget and say just two rooms, and the kids share
Rooms are £500 a night. That’s £1000 a night. For two weeks that’s £14,000. Add in flights to Sri Lanka, trips, and the rest, and you’re heading for £20,000. For a winter holiday
Exactly how wealthy is the average PB-er?!
Well I push up the average lol.
Good to hear!
I’m quite well off, I guess, but I would blink furiously at dropping £20k on a winter holiday
In my professional capacity for the Knappers Gazette I’ve done trips that would have cost £100,000 for 2 weeks. They were great fun. But they certainly weren’t worth £100,000. I suppose some people are just so rich it doesn’t matter
Spend £100k every two weeks and it adds up to £2.6m in a year, or £26m in a decade.
There have been a few lottery jackpots that would still be left largely intact after that.
The economics of the holiday industry baffle me. I don't feel well-off. But I know what the average family income is, and we earn a fair bit more than that. I usually tick one of the top two boxes in surveys on the 'household income' page. And while I'll never feel entirely comfortable, we're probably top decile for capital. And yet almost all holidays I see advertised are wildly, wildly unaffordable. I consider £3000 for a week away for five towards the upper end of extravagant. Yet almost any foreign family holiday that isn't transparently worse than staying at home seems to be more than this. I simply don't understand how this works. There surely can't be that many people who can afford a holiday like this every year. And don't get me started on Disneyland. Not that I want to go - but I don't see how more than a tiny proportion of the population can ever afford it.
The average family holiday to Spain or France, even in the height of summer, would cost far less than £3,000 probably under £1,000
Well maybe. But just getting four return tickets by air in the school holidays would cost over £1000. There must be cheap holidays out there - or no-one would be able to afford holidays at all. But those that I've seen look awful - at least compared to the option of staying at home. I don't know much about the abroad market. But I know a fair bit about the British market. And it's dashed difficult to get a self-catering place for 5 in the school holidays for much under £1000.
A family holiday in France or Spain for under £1000, for a fortnight, during the school hols? How? Surely impossible, unless you drive and camp or something, and do it mega cheap, buying all your food in the nearest Aldi
How many do that?
I guess for a week at a two star hotel, but even then you’d be hard pushed with a family
2 weeks in Benidorm for 2 adults and 2 children in July for £761 here
So we have a situation where the Met are saying it's only penalty notices, and the former DPP Macdonald ( and Starmer, it looks like ) both seem to think what is going on makes no sense, in that case.
Just what exactly is going on ?
I suspect the Met are going through everything with a fine-tooth comb. There’s a serious risk of them taking a beating from all sides if they even slightly fuck this one up.
They have already fucked it up to an 11 on a scale 1-10.
The behaviour of the number 10 police, to me, indicates a fundamental desire to avoid getting drawn into political rows. They’ve ended up creating the very problem they were hoping to avoid.
"Not getting drawn into political rows" is beginning to look suspiciously like "not troubling the inhabitants with the same level of scrutiny as the rest of the country". They only even finally got involved, and grudgingly, this week, after however many months of obfuscations and delay. Something doesn't feel right with their handling of this whole situation at all.
So we have a situation where the Met are saying it's only penalty notices, and the former DPP Macdonald ( and Starmer, it looks like ) both seem to think what is going on makes no sense, in that case.
Just what exactly is going on ?
The main questions I have are: Why did Sue Gray involve the police? Why did the police decide to investigate? Why is the report content impacted by the fact they are now investigating?
The answers would be obvious if we were talking about serious offences but we aren't. Partygate is a massive political scandal about the lies & hypocrisy of Boris Johnson. But as a criminal matter it's utterly trivial.
However like many such people, it's probably hard to disentangle business from pleasure: e.g. he may go somewhere nice with the kids and have a few meetings, and call it 'working'.
Like Bill Gates reading every line of Microsoft's code, or Steve Jobs designing everything Apple made, it's rubbish.
I know someone that has met him a few times, so I am not sure it is. He is a one off, and not necessarily in a good way.
For a man worth seven trillion dollars, Musk is weirdly and easily annoyed by minor people on Twitter with 6 followers. Quite strange
He is a very weird dude all-round...the few long form interviews he has done with Joe Rogan and Lex Fridman only reinforces that.
Indeed, but we definitely need more Elon Musks in the world.
The Fridman interview especially, is worth watching.
A guy who I shared an office with when doing my PhD was rather similar individual.
On one occasion we had one of the most famous academics in our field come for a visit as they were thinking of changing institutions and a personal friend of our supervisor, and the whole exercise was to butter him up with examples of the interesting work we had been doing.
Academic comes into our lab, asks mini Elon Musk what he had been working on, Mini Elon shows him, world famous academic says interesting, its a bit like my work on such and such, did you try this....Mini Elon sits there in silence for an uncomfortable long time, before telling him to his face his whole research was based upon a flawed premise.
Love it! I have a young relative whom I wonder whether he will become a Musk, though I would probably prefer a Gates (as Gates seems a much nicer guy); he is totally focussed, obsessed about his technology that he has developed and literally works all hours on it. Helps that he is also very clever, and unlike Musk has really good people skills, except when he gets into serious geek mode and doesn't quite realise people are not interested!!
I've worked with some really intelligent people (including, I have to say, Mrs J (*)). Most of them have made a comfortable or more than comfortable living, but few have become rich, yet alone massively rich.
The problem is it takes so many things aside from just intelligence and a great work habit: for instance, I have a rather low risk-taking mindset which means there's no way I'd take some of the insane gambles Musk took with his first minor fortune. Then there's luck and opportunity. Or Job's Reality Distortion Field.
I think you also need to be a sh*t at times. Jobs certainly was, Musk was, and even Gates was at times - e.g. the way he treated Paul Allen over shares.
The Outliers book by Malcolm Gladwell explains the likes of Gates story, a number of fortunate things occurred which meant he was right place, right time to capitalise on his abilities and drive.
I know of a UK tech entrepreneur, probably the most brilliant person I have ever met and has done very well in life, but if he had been born maybe 15 years later he could well have been talked about in the same circles as Jobs or Gates. Back in the day, he did work a fair bit with the likes of Jobs, but a number of their brilliant ideas were 15 years too soon, but are now commonplace.
“Not really. If you spend money on holidays, for a family, you tend to end up in something like that. Unless you really fight the demand for luxury bathrooms etc.”
+++++
I do not wish to pry into PB-ears private circumstances, but this is an intriguing comment
If you had a family holiday here - the Galle hotel we have been discussing - you’d need three rooms for yourself, one for you and the partner, two for the kids
But let’s budget and say just two rooms, and the kids share
Rooms are £500 a night. That’s £1000 a night. For two weeks that’s £14,000. Add in flights to Sri Lanka, trips, and the rest, and you’re heading for £20,000. For a winter holiday
Exactly how wealthy is the average PB-er?!
Well I push up the average lol.
Good to hear!
I’m quite well off, I guess, but I would blink furiously at dropping £20k on a winter holiday
In my professional capacity for the Knappers Gazette I’ve done trips that would have cost £100,000 for 2 weeks. They were great fun. But they certainly weren’t worth £100,000. I suppose some people are just so rich it doesn’t matter
Spend £100k every two weeks and it adds up to £2.6m in a year, or £26m in a decade.
There have been a few lottery jackpots that would still be left largely intact after that.
The economics of the holiday industry baffle me. I don't feel well-off. But I know what the average family income is, and we earn a fair bit more than that. I usually tick one of the top two boxes in surveys on the 'household income' page. And while I'll never feel entirely comfortable, we're probably top decile for capital. And yet almost all holidays I see advertised are wildly, wildly unaffordable. I consider £3000 for a week away for five towards the upper end of extravagant. Yet almost any foreign family holiday that isn't transparently worse than staying at home seems to be more than this. I simply don't understand how this works. There surely can't be that many people who can afford a holiday like this every year. And don't get me started on Disneyland. Not that I want to go - but I don't see how more than a tiny proportion of the population can ever afford it.
The average family holiday to Spain or France, even in the height of summer, would cost far less than £3,000 probably under £1,000
Well maybe. But just getting four return tickets by air in the school holidays would cost over £1000. There must be cheap holidays out there - or no-one would be able to afford holidays at all. But those that I've seen look awful - at least compared to the option of staying at home. I don't know much about the abroad market. But I know a fair bit about the British market. And it's dashed difficult to get a self-catering place for 5 in the school holidays for much under £1000.
A family holiday in France or Spain for under £1000, for a fortnight, during the school hols? How? Surely impossible, unless you drive and camp or something, and do it mega cheap, buying all your food in the nearest Aldi
How many do that?
I guess for a week at a two star hotel, but even then you’d be hard pushed with a family
2 weeks in Benidorm for 2 adults and 2 children in July for £761 here
Stephen Bush @stephenkb · 4h Yet to see a poll or sit in on a focus group where it's not clear that people a) think that the allegations are true and b) expect there to be some kind of fix or cover-up.
However like many such people, it's probably hard to disentangle business from pleasure: e.g. he may go somewhere nice with the kids and have a few meetings, and call it 'working'.
Like Bill Gates reading every line of Microsoft's code, or Steve Jobs designing everything Apple made, it's rubbish.
I know someone that has met him a few times, so I am not sure it is. He is a one off, and not necessarily in a good way.
For a man worth seven trillion dollars, Musk is weirdly and easily annoyed by minor people on Twitter with 6 followers. Quite strange
He is a very weird dude all-round...the few long form interviews he has done with Joe Rogan and Lex Fridman only reinforces that.
Indeed, but we definitely need more Elon Musks in the world.
The Fridman interview especially, is worth watching.
The comments I've had from past colleagues who actually met him, is that there seem to be two Elon's. Bored Elon = Bad Elon. Better Elon is when he has something to do - preferably solving a numerical or physical problem.
Oh wow. Didn’t see these before, there goes my evening
Love what SpaceX are doing, it’s truly groundbreaking work for humanity, the likes of which we last saw in the 1960s.
Tim Dodd (the Everyday Astronaut) is generally excellent.
The story about the interview (according to Dodd) was that he had a regular interview scheduled. he urned up, then some assistant to Musk said he was hyper busy, then Musk asked if he was OK with a walk-and-talk-while-I-work thing.
A guy who I shared an office with when doing my PhD was rather similar individual.
On one occasion we had one of the most famous academics in our field come for a visit as they were thinking of changing institutions and a personal friend of our supervisor, and the whole exercise was to butter him up with examples of the interesting work we had been doing.
Academic comes into our lab, asks mini Elon Musk what he had been working on, Mini Elon shows him, world famous academic says interesting, its a bit like my work on such and such, did you try this....Mini Elon sits there in silence for an uncomfortable long time, before telling him to his face his whole research was based upon a flawed premise.
At a lower level, I once worked on artificial translation in the early days, and had an article published in a journal, how exciting. Someone else reviewed it in a later article. In essence he said, "The argument is, of course, wrong, but the reason that it's wrong is interesting..." (three coruscating paragraphs followed)
I took it as a hint to move away from academic research. Not that I'm conceding that he was right or anything.
Stephen Bush @stephenkb · 4h Yet to see a poll or sit in on a focus group where it's not clear that people a) think that the allegations are true and b) expect there to be some kind of fix or cover-up.
“Not really. If you spend money on holidays, for a family, you tend to end up in something like that. Unless you really fight the demand for luxury bathrooms etc.”
+++++
I do not wish to pry into PB-ears private circumstances, but this is an intriguing comment
If you had a family holiday here - the Galle hotel we have been discussing - you’d need three rooms for yourself, one for you and the partner, two for the kids
But let’s budget and say just two rooms, and the kids share
Rooms are £500 a night. That’s £1000 a night. For two weeks that’s £14,000. Add in flights to Sri Lanka, trips, and the rest, and you’re heading for £20,000. For a winter holiday
Exactly how wealthy is the average PB-er?!
Well I push up the average lol.
Good to hear!
I’m quite well off, I guess, but I would blink furiously at dropping £20k on a winter holiday
In my professional capacity for the Knappers Gazette I’ve done trips that would have cost £100,000 for 2 weeks. They were great fun. But they certainly weren’t worth £100,000. I suppose some people are just so rich it doesn’t matter
Spend £100k every two weeks and it adds up to £2.6m in a year, or £26m in a decade.
There have been a few lottery jackpots that would still be left largely intact after that.
The economics of the holiday industry baffle me. I don't feel well-off. But I know what the average family income is, and we earn a fair bit more than that. I usually tick one of the top two boxes in surveys on the 'household income' page. And while I'll never feel entirely comfortable, we're probably top decile for capital. And yet almost all holidays I see advertised are wildly, wildly unaffordable. I consider £3000 for a week away for five towards the upper end of extravagant. Yet almost any foreign family holiday that isn't transparently worse than staying at home seems to be more than this. I simply don't understand how this works. There surely can't be that many people who can afford a holiday like this every year. And don't get me started on Disneyland. Not that I want to go - but I don't see how more than a tiny proportion of the population can ever afford it.
Indeed
The Maldives are particularly nuts. I went there for the Gazette and they are as lovely as everyone says, but they are also ridiculously expensive (certainly the nicer island-hotels). Somewhere like Soneva Fushi. A fortnight there is £30-40k easy for a family.
I presumed I was surrounded by billionaires but there were a lot of Brits who seemed perfectly normal middle class. Lawyers, doctors, what have you
My only explanation is that there is a LOT of inherited wealth in the UK (and elsewhere)
We also didn't pay when we went to the Maldives. The resort was absolutely pristine and we felt very lucky to be there but it is fundamentally just a beach (albeit a very pretty one) and it's not something I would have spent money on. Perhaps the people who pay to go there are those people who write articles in the Telegraph saying they can't afford to live on £100k a year. Some people are just a bit bling.
I guess there's not much point going somewhere like the Maldives if you don't dive
Completely wrong. Famously, the snorkelling in the Maldives is much better than the diving
I have done both, and I promise you you are totally wrong. Snorkelling is great in the Maldives, but nowhere near as good as diving.
For example, being surrounded by mantas circling around you is probably better than going into space (and much cheaper), and you cannot get the same effect snorkelling.
I doubt you even manage to leave the bar.
Er, sorry, I’ve also done both in the Maldives. I dive a fair bit
In terms of bang per buck, rewards received for effort made, the snorkeling is far superior. On a good reef you just have to dip your head in the water and you are surrounded by billions of fish. It is surreally good. The best snorkelling in the world? Certainly up there
Diving in the Maldives is good but not world class. And you have all the bloody effort that goes with diving
I have done both too, albeit not in the Maldives.
I prefer snorkelling. The vast majority of the interest is in the top 10 meters as light dependent, and the freedom of snorkelling much nicer than the claustrophobia of diving kit, but that is a personal thing really. Once below 10 meters the risks go up and the interest goes down.
I don't know, I find diving super-relaxing, and snorkelling just doesn't give me the feeling of being part of another world, rather than just a visitor. Hanging 5 or 10 metres down is different to looking from above or kicking down for however long you can hold your breath (not very long in my case). Taking the time to calmly examine all the amazing life. Or swimming along with turtles or sharks or rays.
“Not really. If you spend money on holidays, for a family, you tend to end up in something like that. Unless you really fight the demand for luxury bathrooms etc.”
+++++
I do not wish to pry into PB-ears private circumstances, but this is an intriguing comment
If you had a family holiday here - the Galle hotel we have been discussing - you’d need three rooms for yourself, one for you and the partner, two for the kids
But let’s budget and say just two rooms, and the kids share
Rooms are £500 a night. That’s £1000 a night. For two weeks that’s £14,000. Add in flights to Sri Lanka, trips, and the rest, and you’re heading for £20,000. For a winter holiday
Exactly how wealthy is the average PB-er?!
Well I push up the average lol.
Good to hear!
I’m quite well off, I guess, but I would blink furiously at dropping £20k on a winter holiday
In my professional capacity for the Knappers Gazette I’ve done trips that would have cost £100,000 for 2 weeks. They were great fun. But they certainly weren’t worth £100,000. I suppose some people are just so rich it doesn’t matter
Spend £100k every two weeks and it adds up to £2.6m in a year, or £26m in a decade.
There have been a few lottery jackpots that would still be left largely intact after that.
The economics of the holiday industry baffle me. I don't feel well-off. But I know what the average family income is, and we earn a fair bit more than that. I usually tick one of the top two boxes in surveys on the 'household income' page. And while I'll never feel entirely comfortable, we're probably top decile for capital. And yet almost all holidays I see advertised are wildly, wildly unaffordable. I consider £3000 for a week away for five towards the upper end of extravagant. Yet almost any foreign family holiday that isn't transparently worse than staying at home seems to be more than this. I simply don't understand how this works. There surely can't be that many people who can afford a holiday like this every year. And don't get me started on Disneyland. Not that I want to go - but I don't see how more than a tiny proportion of the population can ever afford it.
The average family holiday to Spain or France, even in the height of summer, would cost far less than £3,000 probably under £1,000
Well maybe. But just getting four return tickets by air in the school holidays would cost over £1000. There must be cheap holidays out there - or no-one would be able to afford holidays at all. But those that I've seen look awful - at least compared to the option of staying at home. I don't know much about the abroad market. But I know a fair bit about the British market. And it's dashed difficult to get a self-catering place for 5 in the school holidays for much under £1000.
A family holiday in France or Spain for under £1000, for a fortnight, during the school hols? How? Surely impossible, unless you drive and camp or something, and do it mega cheap, buying all your food in the nearest Aldi
How many do that?
I guess for a week at a two star hotel, but even then you’d be hard pushed with a family
2 weeks in Benidorm for 2 adults and 2 children in July for £761 here
So we have a situation where the Met are saying it's only penalty notices, and the former DPP Macdonald ( and Starmer, it looks like ) both seem to think what is going on makes no sense, in that case.
Just what exactly is going on ?
I suspect the Met are going through everything with a fine-tooth comb. There’s a serious risk of them taking a beating from all sides if they even slightly fuck this one up.
They have already fucked it up to an 11 on a scale 1-10.
The behaviour of the number 10 police, to me, indicates a fundamental desire to avoid getting drawn into political rows. They’ve ended up creating the very problem they were hoping to avoid.
"Not getting drawn into political rows" is beginning to look suspiciously like "not troubling the inhabitants with the same level of scrutiny as the rest of the country". They only even finally got involved, and grudgingly, this week, after however many months of obfuscations and delay. Something doesn't feel right with their handling of this whole business at all.
Was the meeting with the London Assembly when Dick made her announcement a special event or just one of a regular meetings to update the members?
If the latter then if it had just happened to be a week later I rather suspect we would now all be reading the Gray report.
Johnson must be feeling more confident of escaping the 54 letters, he seems to pressing ahead with the NI rise.
Another nail. My prediction/guess that he will be gone after the May locals looks more likely. Not sure I need to be looking up a hair shirt in medium to wear for all July after all.
I think you should book the tailors for that fitting. Big Dog is going nowhere.
Pig Dog is history. These are just extended death throes.
However like many such people, it's probably hard to disentangle business from pleasure: e.g. he may go somewhere nice with the kids and have a few meetings, and call it 'working'.
Like Bill Gates reading every line of Microsoft's code, or Steve Jobs designing everything Apple made, it's rubbish.
I know someone that has met him a few times, so I am not sure it is. He is a one off, and not necessarily in a good way.
For a man worth seven trillion dollars, Musk is weirdly and easily annoyed by minor people on Twitter with 6 followers. Quite strange
He is a very weird dude all-round...the few long form interviews he has done with Joe Rogan and Lex Fridman only reinforces that.
Indeed, but we definitely need more Elon Musks in the world.
The Fridman interview especially, is worth watching.
A guy who I shared an office with when doing my PhD was rather similar individual.
On one occasion we had one of the most famous academics in our field come for a visit as they were thinking of changing institutions and a personal friend of our supervisor, and the whole exercise was to butter him up with examples of the interesting work we had been doing.
Academic comes into our lab, asks mini Elon Musk what he had been working on, Mini Elon shows him, world famous academic says interesting, its a bit like my work on such and such, did you try this....Mini Elon sits there in silence for an uncomfortable long time, before telling him to his face his whole research was based upon a flawed premise.
Love it! I have a young relative whom I wonder whether he will become a Musk, though I would probably prefer a Gates (as Gates seems a much nicer guy); he is totally focussed, obsessed about his technology that he has developed and literally works all hours on it. Helps that he is also very clever, and unlike Musk has really good people skills, except when he gets into serious geek mode and doesn't quite realise people are not interested!!
I've worked with some really intelligent people (including, I have to say, Mrs J (*)). Most of them have made a comfortable or more than comfortable living, but few have become rich, yet alone massively rich.
The problem is it takes so many things aside from just intelligence and a great work habit: for instance, I have a rather low risk-taking mindset which means there's no way I'd take some of the insane gambles Musk took with his first minor fortune. Then there's luck and opportunity. Or Job's Reality Distortion Field.
I think you also need to be a sh*t at times. Jobs certainly was, Musk was, and even Gates was at times - e.g. the way he treated Paul Allen over shares.
Indeed. It is much easier to predict corporate leadership success, than entrepreneurial success. There are too many variables in the latter, one of which is luck which plays a great part in any entrepreneurial enterprise. Ruthlessness is useful, but I think it is overestimated. Supreme levels of drive, optimism and resilience, and normally honesty and transparency are generally keys to success in most endeavours, particularly business. Has anyone watched "Jerusalem" on Prime? It is a documentary about the England rugby world cup win. Jonny Wilkinson - amazing character, a lesson in pure focus and ambition.
So we have a situation where the Met are saying it's only penalty notices, and the former DPP Macdonald ( and Starmer, it looks like ) both seem to think what is going on makes no sense, in that case.
Just what exactly is going on ?
The main questions I have are: Why did Sue Gray involve the police? Why did the police decide to investigate? Why is the report content impacted by the fact they are now investigating?
The answers would be obvious if we were talking about serious offences but we aren't. Partygate is a massive political scandal about the lies & hypocrisy of Boris Johnson. But as a criminal matter it's utterly trivial.
So it's not quite scanning for me at the moment.
Hint - it is never the crime that gets you but the cover up.
I suspect the issue is deleting emails or something similar after being told not to...
One of the few arms of government that's always been respected by the public is the Civil Service. Johnson has now managed to trash even that. Sue Grey like many before her must rue the day she agreed to have anything to do with him. Starmer should walk away. Johnson's a pariah and he should be left where he belongs in the bosom of the Tory Party
“Not really. If you spend money on holidays, for a family, you tend to end up in something like that. Unless you really fight the demand for luxury bathrooms etc.”
+++++
I do not wish to pry into PB-ears private circumstances, but this is an intriguing comment
If you had a family holiday here - the Galle hotel we have been discussing - you’d need three rooms for yourself, one for you and the partner, two for the kids
But let’s budget and say just two rooms, and the kids share
Rooms are £500 a night. That’s £1000 a night. For two weeks that’s £14,000. Add in flights to Sri Lanka, trips, and the rest, and you’re heading for £20,000. For a winter holiday
Exactly how wealthy is the average PB-er?!
Well I push up the average lol.
Good to hear!
I’m quite well off, I guess, but I would blink furiously at dropping £20k on a winter holiday
In my professional capacity for the Knappers Gazette I’ve done trips that would have cost £100,000 for 2 weeks. They were great fun. But they certainly weren’t worth £100,000. I suppose some people are just so rich it doesn’t matter
Spend £100k every two weeks and it adds up to £2.6m in a year, or £26m in a decade.
There have been a few lottery jackpots that would still be left largely intact after that.
The economics of the holiday industry baffle me. I don't feel well-off. But I know what the average family income is, and we earn a fair bit more than that. I usually tick one of the top two boxes in surveys on the 'household income' page. And while I'll never feel entirely comfortable, we're probably top decile for capital. And yet almost all holidays I see advertised are wildly, wildly unaffordable. I consider £3000 for a week away for five towards the upper end of extravagant. Yet almost any foreign family holiday that isn't transparently worse than staying at home seems to be more than this. I simply don't understand how this works. There surely can't be that many people who can afford a holiday like this every year. And don't get me started on Disneyland. Not that I want to go - but I don't see how more than a tiny proportion of the population can ever afford it.
The average family holiday to Spain or France, even in the height of summer, would cost far less than £3,000 probably under £1,000
Well maybe. But just getting four return tickets by air in the school holidays would cost over £1000. There must be cheap holidays out there - or no-one would be able to afford holidays at all. But those that I've seen look awful - at least compared to the option of staying at home. I don't know much about the abroad market. But I know a fair bit about the British market. And it's dashed difficult to get a self-catering place for 5 in the school holidays for much under £1000.
A family holiday in France or Spain for under £1000, for a fortnight, during the school hols? How? Surely impossible, unless you drive and camp or something, and do it mega cheap, buying all your food in the nearest Aldi
How many do that?
I guess for a week at a two star hotel, but even then you’d be hard pushed with a family
2 weeks in Benidorm for 2 adults and 2 children in July for £761 here
So we have a situation where the Met are saying it's only penalty notices, and the former DPP Macdonald ( and Starmer, it looks like ) both seem to think what is going on makes no sense, in that case.
Just what exactly is going on ?
I suspect the Met are going through everything with a fine-tooth comb. There’s a serious risk of them taking a beating from all sides if they even slightly fuck this one up.
So we have a situation where the Met are saying it's only penalty notices, and the former DPP Macdonald ( and Starmer, it looks like ) both seem to think what is going on makes no sense, in that case.
Just what exactly is going on ?
The main questions I have are: Why did Sue Gray involve the police? Why did the police decide to investigate? Why is the report content impacted by the fact they are now investigating?
The answers would be obvious if we were talking about serious offences but we aren't. Partygate is a massive political scandal about the lies & hypocrisy of Boris Johnson. But as a criminal matter it's utterly trivial.
So it's not quite scanning for me at the moment.
Hint - it is never the crime that gets you but the cover up.
I suspect the issue is deleting emails or something similar after being told not to...
But the police have said today that that's not what they're investigating, according to the link below.
Johnson must be feeling more confident of escaping the 54 letters, he seems to pressing ahead with the NI rise.
Another nail. My prediction/guess that he will be gone after the May locals looks more likely. Not sure I need to be looking up a hair shirt in medium to wear for all July after all.
I think you should book the tailors for that fitting. Big Dog is going nowhere.
Pig Dog is history. These are just extended death throes.
When on election night you turn on the TV and watch to the victorious acceptance speech that starts "Um, er, phwoar, phwoar" you will be reminded that I was right.
However like many such people, it's probably hard to disentangle business from pleasure: e.g. he may go somewhere nice with the kids and have a few meetings, and call it 'working'.
Like Bill Gates reading every line of Microsoft's code, or Steve Jobs designing everything Apple made, it's rubbish.
I know someone that has met him a few times, so I am not sure it is. He is a one off, and not necessarily in a good way.
For a man worth seven trillion dollars, Musk is weirdly and easily annoyed by minor people on Twitter with 6 followers. Quite strange
He is a very weird dude all-round...the few long form interviews he has done with Joe Rogan and Lex Fridman only reinforces that.
Indeed, but we definitely need more Elon Musks in the world.
The Fridman interview especially, is worth watching.
A guy who I shared an office with when doing my PhD was rather similar individual.
On one occasion we had one of the most famous academics in our field come for a visit as they were thinking of changing institutions and a personal friend of our supervisor, and the whole exercise was to butter him up with examples of the interesting work we had been doing.
Academic comes into our lab, asks mini Elon Musk what he had been working on, Mini Elon shows him, world famous academic says interesting, its a bit like my work on such and such, did you try this....Mini Elon sits there in silence for an uncomfortable long time, before telling him to his face his whole research was based upon a flawed premise.
Years ago I read a story in a book: annoyingly, I do not know if it was a fictional story or a real one. A maths professor was teaching PhD students at a uni. He had made his name decades before with a theorem. One day, a very bright student asked to have a word with him, and over the course of a few hours comprehensively demolished his theorem.
The professor checked and rechecked, and then broke into tears and said: "Thanks for proving me wrong."
It was used as an example of how academics should be, but rarely are. I wish I remembered where I read it...
Stephen Bush @stephenkb · 4h Yet to see a poll or sit in on a focus group where it's not clear that people a) think that the allegations are true and b) expect there to be some kind of fix or cover-up.
I think Rishi has blown it. Like Michael Portillo and David Miliband before him, he'll been seen as a politician who had the great prize within his grasp but wibbled.
Spot on, in the end Portillo failed to oust Major and Miliband failed to oust Brown and neither either ended up leaders of their party, loosing to IDS in 2001 and Ed Miliband in 2010 respectively.
Though Portillo has had a successful post politics career doing rail programmes and Miliband is head of international rescue in Manhattan so all not lost for Sunak longer term.
I wouldn't get too excited that your idol is in the clear. Whether it is Sunak or someone else, The Clown will not last past June IMO. There is just too much on him, and the vultures are just holding off until he is a little more wounded.
My humble prediction is that the drip drip of allegations and insinuations will ensure he ends up with a terrible result in May. MPs in more marginal constituencies will apply the swing to their GE result and take action. Whether it will be too late to prevent a Labour win at the next GE is open to conjecture.
As long as polls continue to show a hung parliament and a Labour lead under 10% and as long as the Tories hold Westminster and Kensington and Chelsea in May and as long as the Met and Gray inquiries find Boris did not do anything criminal. Then I predict Boris will still be PM and lead the Tories at the next general election
Hung Parliament on under 10% Labour lead?
Write out 100 times "Uniform National Swing does not work in the grand scheme of United Kingdom General Elections".
It does, on UNS on the new boundaries even a 9% Labour lead only leads to Labour 309 seats and Tories 246.
Labour still 17 short of a majority. Plus Starmer Labour is still not seen as as centrist as Blair's New Labour by the middle classes, even if not as bad as Corbyn Labour. So while they might tactically vote LD, they are much less likely to tactically vote Labour.
I am not, there is a 99% chance Starmer will not become PM with a majority in my view, even if he becomes PM with LD and SNP support in a hung parliament
I don't dispute that because of Scotland, but when you get to 6 to 7 percent all sorts of permutations come into play. You should be more concerned at the LD improvement today because you now have Labour to contend with on your left flank and the LDs to contend with on your not quite so left flank.
Indeed. I remember being laughed at incredulously by some Tory friends (who thought they knew better) in advance of the 2015 election when I said I thought Cameron would get a small majority. Maybe it was a lucky guess (and I did milk it afterwards), but I think there is a reasonable chance Labour will get a majority after the next one. (Waiting for HY to start a response with "no")
If Labour want to increase their chances of a majority, they need to persuade Slab to stop shooting themselves in the foot by continuing to alienate their former voters who are not as anti an Indyref as their leaders. If Starmer can do that, he will have a better chance.
So we have a situation where the Met are saying it's only penalty notices, and the former DPP Macdonald ( and Starmer, it looks like ) both seem to think what is going on makes no sense, in that case.
Just what exactly is going on ?
I suspect the Met are going through everything with a fine-tooth comb. There’s a serious risk of them taking a beating from all sides if they even slightly fuck this one up.
They have already fucked it up to an 11 on a scale 1-10.
- Cases. Flat. R = 1 overall, But signs of another fall. R for older groups is below 1 - Admissions - R is solidly below 1. Down - MV Beds - Down - In hospital - Down - Deaths - Down
So we have a situation where the Met are saying it's only penalty notices, and the former DPP Macdonald ( and Starmer, it looks like ) both seem to think what is going on makes no sense, in that case.
Just what exactly is going on ?
The main questions I have are: Why did Sue Gray involve the police? Why did the police decide to investigate? Why is the report content impacted by the fact they are now investigating?
The answers would be obvious if we were talking about serious offences but we aren't. Partygate is a massive political scandal about the lies & hypocrisy of Boris Johnson. But as a criminal matter it's utterly trivial.
Stephen Bush @stephenkb · 4h Yet to see a poll or sit in on a focus group where it's not clear that people a) think that the allegations are true and b) expect there to be some kind of fix or cover-up.
So we have a situation where the Met are saying it's only penalty notices, and the former DPP Macdonald ( and Starmer, it looks like ) both seem to think what is going on makes no sense, in that case.
Just what exactly is going on ?
I suspect the Met are going through everything with a fine-tooth comb. There’s a serious risk of them taking a beating from all sides if they even slightly fuck this one up.
They have already fucked it up to an 11 on a scale 1-10.
Only 11?
Depends how many times round the dial it has already been ...
“Not really. If you spend money on holidays, for a family, you tend to end up in something like that. Unless you really fight the demand for luxury bathrooms etc.”
+++++
I do not wish to pry into PB-ears private circumstances, but this is an intriguing comment
If you had a family holiday here - the Galle hotel we have been discussing - you’d need three rooms for yourself, one for you and the partner, two for the kids
But let’s budget and say just two rooms, and the kids share
Rooms are £500 a night. That’s £1000 a night. For two weeks that’s £14,000. Add in flights to Sri Lanka, trips, and the rest, and you’re heading for £20,000. For a winter holiday
Exactly how wealthy is the average PB-er?!
Well I push up the average lol.
Good to hear!
I’m quite well off, I guess, but I would blink furiously at dropping £20k on a winter holiday
In my professional capacity for the Knappers Gazette I’ve done trips that would have cost £100,000 for 2 weeks. They were great fun. But they certainly weren’t worth £100,000. I suppose some people are just so rich it doesn’t matter
Spend £100k every two weeks and it adds up to £2.6m in a year, or £26m in a decade.
There have been a few lottery jackpots that would still be left largely intact after that.
The economics of the holiday industry baffle me. I don't feel well-off. But I know what the average family income is, and we earn a fair bit more than that. I usually tick one of the top two boxes in surveys on the 'household income' page. And while I'll never feel entirely comfortable, we're probably top decile for capital. And yet almost all holidays I see advertised are wildly, wildly unaffordable. I consider £3000 for a week away for five towards the upper end of extravagant. Yet almost any foreign family holiday that isn't transparently worse than staying at home seems to be more than this. I simply don't understand how this works. There surely can't be that many people who can afford a holiday like this every year. And don't get me started on Disneyland. Not that I want to go - but I don't see how more than a tiny proportion of the population can ever afford it.
The average family holiday to Spain or France, even in the height of summer, would cost far less than £3,000 probably under £1,000
Well maybe. But just getting four return tickets by air in the school holidays would cost over £1000. There must be cheap holidays out there - or no-one would be able to afford holidays at all. But those that I've seen look awful - at least compared to the option of staying at home. I don't know much about the abroad market. But I know a fair bit about the British market. And it's dashed difficult to get a self-catering place for 5 in the school holidays for much under £1000.
Many Scots take advantage of the different school summer holiday dates to fly from Manchester or Newcastle at lower rates before the start of the English holidays. I assume that families in the North of England also take advantage by flying from Edinburgh or Glasgow after the end of the Scottish holidays.
A guy who I shared an office with when doing my PhD was rather similar individual.
On one occasion we had one of the most famous academics in our field come for a visit as they were thinking of changing institutions and a personal friend of our supervisor, and the whole exercise was to butter him up with examples of the interesting work we had been doing.
Academic comes into our lab, asks mini Elon Musk what he had been working on, Mini Elon shows him, world famous academic says interesting, its a bit like my work on such and such, did you try this....Mini Elon sits there in silence for an uncomfortable long time, before telling him to his face his whole research was based upon a flawed premise.
At a lower level, I once worked on artificial translation in the early days, and had an article published in a journal, how exciting. Someone else reviewed it in a later article. In essence he said, "The argument is, of course, wrong, but the reason that it's wrong is interesting..." (three coruscating paragraphs followed)
I took it as a hint to move away from academic research. Not that I'm conceding that he was right or anything.
The ontological argument of Anselm is (perhaps!) wrong but has spawned a fertile and continuing debate and discussion heading now for 1000 years and showing no sign of giving up; the debate including top greats and significant figures like Aquinas, Leibniz, Kant, Whitehead, Plantinga and a pantheon of others.
It took an Einstein to show where Newton was wrong. It doesn't trivialise Newton.
A guy who I shared an office with when doing my PhD was rather similar individual.
On one occasion we had one of the most famous academics in our field come for a visit as they were thinking of changing institutions and a personal friend of our supervisor, and the whole exercise was to butter him up with examples of the interesting work we had been doing.
Academic comes into our lab, asks mini Elon Musk what he had been working on, Mini Elon shows him, world famous academic says interesting, its a bit like my work on such and such, did you try this....Mini Elon sits there in silence for an uncomfortable long time, before telling him to his face his whole research was based upon a flawed premise.
At a lower level, I once worked on artificial translation in the early days, and had an article published in a journal, how exciting. Someone else reviewed it in a later article. In essence he said, "The argument is, of course, wrong, but the reason that it's wrong is interesting..." (three coruscating paragraphs followed)
I took it as a hint to move away from academic research. Not that I'm conceding that he was right or anything.
I worked briefly in academia at a similar level. I couldn't get over how rude everyone was to each other. In commerce, people are out to eat your lunch but they are basically polite.
So we have a situation where the Met are saying it's only penalty notices, and the former DPP Macdonald ( and Starmer, it looks like ) both seem to think what is going on makes no sense, in that case.
Just what exactly is going on ?
I suspect the Met are going through everything with a fine-tooth comb. There’s a serious risk of them taking a beating from all sides if they even slightly fuck this one up.
DCMS top civil servant attended a bunch of test events and received some hospitality last year. So what? Is this “story” related to another story that can’t be talked about, is it something that will be seen in the future as linked to a much more significant story. The Mail had it as one of their top half dozen headline stories yesterday. Why?
I think Rishi has blown it. Like Michael Portillo and David Miliband before him, he'll been seen as a politician who had the great prize within his grasp but wibbled.
Spot on, in the end Portillo failed to oust Major and Miliband failed to oust Brown and neither either ended up leaders of their party, loosing to IDS in 2001 and Ed Miliband in 2010 respectively.
Though Portillo has had a successful post politics career doing rail programmes and Miliband is head of international rescue in Manhattan so all not lost for Sunak longer term.
I wouldn't get too excited that your idol is in the clear. Whether it is Sunak or someone else, The Clown will not last past June IMO. There is just too much on him, and the vultures are just holding off until he is a little more wounded.
My humble prediction is that the drip drip of allegations and insinuations will ensure he ends up with a terrible result in May. MPs in more marginal constituencies will apply the swing to their GE result and take action. Whether it will be too late to prevent a Labour win at the next GE is open to conjecture.
As long as polls continue to show a hung parliament and a Labour lead under 10% and as long as the Tories hold Westminster and Kensington and Chelsea in May and as long as the Met and Gray inquiries find Boris did not do anything criminal. Then I predict Boris will still be PM and lead the Tories at the next general election
Hung Parliament on under 10% Labour lead?
Write out 100 times "Uniform National Swing does not work in the grand scheme of United Kingdom General Elections".
It does, on UNS on the new boundaries even a 9% Labour lead only leads to Labour 309 seats and Tories 246.
Labour still 17 short of a majority. Plus Starmer Labour is still not seen as as centrist as Blair's New Labour by the middle classes, even if not as bad as Corbyn Labour. So while they might tactically vote LD, they are much less likely to tactically vote Labour.
I am not, there is a 99% chance Starmer will not become PM with a majority in my view, even if he becomes PM with LD and SNP support in a hung parliament
I don't dispute that because of Scotland, but when you get to 6 to 7 percent all sorts of permutations come into play. You should be more concerned at the LD improvement today because you now have Labour to contend with on your left flank and the LDs to contend with on your not quite so left flank.
Indeed. I remember being laughed at incredulously by some Tory friends (who thought they knew better) in advance of the 2015 election when I said I thought Cameron would get a small majority. Maybe it was a lucky guess (and I did milk it afterwards), but I think there is a reasonable chance Labour will get a majority after the next one. (Waiting for HY to start a response with "no")
If Labour want to increase their chances of a majority, they need to persuade Slab to stop shooting themselves in the foot by continuing to alienate their former voters who are not as anti an Indyref as their leaders. If Starmer can do that, he will have a better chance.
Only has to order them to [edit] shut up and love indyref2. It's not as if Slab were separate or anything. Jenny Formby could yank Kezia Dugdale's chain simply by cutting off the money and did (over KD's court case).
The problem may be more in England, given the Tories' obvious reaction.
So we have a situation where the Met are saying it's only penalty notices, and the former DPP Macdonald ( and Starmer, it looks like ) both seem to think what is going on makes no sense, in that case.
Just what exactly is going on ?
The main questions I have are: Why did Sue Gray involve the police? Why did the police decide to investigate? Why is the report content impacted by the fact they are now investigating?
The answers would be obvious if we were talking about serious offences but we aren't. Partygate is a massive political scandal about the lies & hypocrisy of Boris Johnson. But as a criminal matter it's utterly trivial.
So it's not quite scanning for me at the moment.
Hint - it is never the crime that gets you but the cover up.
I suspect the issue is deleting emails or something similar after being told not to...
That would maybe make the plot line a little less nonsensical. Otherwise, this police "investigation" should take all of a morning with time for coffee and biscuits at 11. Just cross reference the SG report to the relevant legislation.
- Cases. Flat. R = 1 overall, But signs of another fall. R for older groups is below 1
As usual, national average is hiding significant local variation -- here (Cambridge) cases never fell much and are higher now than they've ever been... (All in kids; no idea why we're such an outlier.)
“Not really. If you spend money on holidays, for a family, you tend to end up in something like that. Unless you really fight the demand for luxury bathrooms etc.”
+++++
I do not wish to pry into PB-ears private circumstances, but this is an intriguing comment
If you had a family holiday here - the Galle hotel we have been discussing - you’d need three rooms for yourself, one for you and the partner, two for the kids
But let’s budget and say just two rooms, and the kids share
Rooms are £500 a night. That’s £1000 a night. For two weeks that’s £14,000. Add in flights to Sri Lanka, trips, and the rest, and you’re heading for £20,000. For a winter holiday
Exactly how wealthy is the average PB-er?!
Well I push up the average lol.
Good to hear!
I’m quite well off, I guess, but I would blink furiously at dropping £20k on a winter holiday
In my professional capacity for the Knappers Gazette I’ve done trips that would have cost £100,000 for 2 weeks. They were great fun. But they certainly weren’t worth £100,000. I suppose some people are just so rich it doesn’t matter
Spend £100k every two weeks and it adds up to £2.6m in a year, or £26m in a decade.
There have been a few lottery jackpots that would still be left largely intact after that.
The economics of the holiday industry baffle me. I don't feel well-off. But I know what the average family income is, and we earn a fair bit more than that. I usually tick one of the top two boxes in surveys on the 'household income' page. And while I'll never feel entirely comfortable, we're probably top decile for capital. And yet almost all holidays I see advertised are wildly, wildly unaffordable. I consider £3000 for a week away for five towards the upper end of extravagant. Yet almost any foreign family holiday that isn't transparently worse than staying at home seems to be more than this. I simply don't understand how this works. There surely can't be that many people who can afford a holiday like this every year. And don't get me started on Disneyland. Not that I want to go - but I don't see how more than a tiny proportion of the population can ever afford it.
The average family holiday to Spain or France, even in the height of summer, would cost far less than £3,000 probably under £1,000
Well maybe. But just getting four return tickets by air in the school holidays would cost over £1000. There must be cheap holidays out there - or no-one would be able to afford holidays at all. But those that I've seen look awful - at least compared to the option of staying at home. I don't know much about the abroad market. But I know a fair bit about the British market. And it's dashed difficult to get a self-catering place for 5 in the school holidays for much under £1000.
A family holiday in France or Spain for under £1000, for a fortnight, during the school hols? How? Surely impossible, unless you drive and camp or something, and do it mega cheap, buying all your food in the nearest Aldi
How many do that?
I guess for a week at a two star hotel, but even then you’d be hard pushed with a family
Even if you drive, the ferry costs at that time push the bill up quite steeply. The overnight from Portsmouth to St Malo is really convenient and great fun (especially with a few friends' families) but costs a few bob in the school holidays. More than flying, although you then save on the car hire.
If you don't mind a 2am crossing and book six months in advance, you can probably cross the channel at Dover for a reasonable rate.
Still: it's going to be *extremely* hard to get all in costs below GBP1,000. You basically will need to get a one bedroom in a two star hotel or a self catering studio flat. And you will be in a tertiary location.
DCMS top civil servant attended a bunch of test events and received some hospitality last year. So what? Is this “story” related to another story that can’t be talked about, is it something that will be seen in the future as linked to a much more significant story. The Mail had it as one of their top half dozen headline stories yesterday. Why?
Hate and Blame the Civil Servants Campaign. Enemy of the People or rather Party (in two senses).
However like many such people, it's probably hard to disentangle business from pleasure: e.g. he may go somewhere nice with the kids and have a few meetings, and call it 'working'.
Like Bill Gates reading every line of Microsoft's code, or Steve Jobs designing everything Apple made, it's rubbish.
I know someone that has met him a few times, so I am not sure it is. He is a one off, and not necessarily in a good way.
For a man worth seven trillion dollars, Musk is weirdly and easily annoyed by minor people on Twitter with 6 followers. Quite strange
He is a very weird dude all-round...the few long form interviews he has done with Joe Rogan and Lex Fridman only reinforces that.
Indeed, but we definitely need more Elon Musks in the world.
The Fridman interview especially, is worth watching.
A guy who I shared an office with when doing my PhD was rather similar individual.
On one occasion we had one of the most famous academics in our field come for a visit as they were thinking of changing institutions and a personal friend of our supervisor, and the whole exercise was to butter him up with examples of the interesting work we had been doing.
Academic comes into our lab, asks mini Elon Musk what he had been working on, Mini Elon shows him, world famous academic says interesting, its a bit like my work on such and such, did you try this....Mini Elon sits there in silence for an uncomfortable long time, before telling him to his face his whole research was based upon a flawed premise.
Love it! I have a young relative whom I wonder whether he will become a Musk, though I would probably prefer a Gates (as Gates seems a much nicer guy); he is totally focussed, obsessed about his technology that he has developed and literally works all hours on it. Helps that he is also very clever, and unlike Musk has really good people skills, except when he gets into serious geek mode and doesn't quite realise people are not interested!!
You might (though probably won't) be interested in the recently published book The Autistic Millionaire by Dave Plummer (ex-Microsoft; most famous for Task Manager). He has a Youtube channel which is good for MS history. The book is based on his own experience, though he has only recently been diagnosed.
I think Rishi has blown it. Like Michael Portillo and David Miliband before him, he'll been seen as a politician who had the great prize within his grasp but wibbled.
Spot on, in the end Portillo failed to oust Major and Miliband failed to oust Brown and neither either ended up leaders of their party, loosing to IDS in 2001 and Ed Miliband in 2010 respectively.
Though Portillo has had a successful post politics career doing rail programmes and Miliband is head of international rescue in Manhattan so all not lost for Sunak longer term.
I wouldn't get too excited that your idol is in the clear. Whether it is Sunak or someone else, The Clown will not last past June IMO. There is just too much on him, and the vultures are just holding off until he is a little more wounded.
My humble prediction is that the drip drip of allegations and insinuations will ensure he ends up with a terrible result in May. MPs in more marginal constituencies will apply the swing to their GE result and take action. Whether it will be too late to prevent a Labour win at the next GE is open to conjecture.
As long as polls continue to show a hung parliament and a Labour lead under 10% and as long as the Tories hold Westminster and Kensington and Chelsea in May and as long as the Met and Gray inquiries find Boris did not do anything criminal. Then I predict Boris will still be PM and lead the Tories at the next general election
Hung Parliament on under 10% Labour lead?
Write out 100 times "Uniform National Swing does not work in the grand scheme of United Kingdom General Elections".
It does, on UNS on the new boundaries even a 9% Labour lead only leads to Labour 309 seats and Tories 246.
Labour still 17 short of a majority. Plus Starmer Labour is still not seen as as centrist as Blair's New Labour by the middle classes, even if not as bad as Corbyn Labour. So while they might tactically vote LD, they are much less likely to tactically vote Labour.
I am not, there is a 99% chance Starmer will not become PM with a majority in my view, even if he becomes PM with LD and SNP support in a hung parliament
I don't dispute that because of Scotland, but when you get to 6 to 7 percent all sorts of permutations come into play. You should be more concerned at the LD improvement today because you now have Labour to contend with on your left flank and the LDs to contend with on your not quite so left flank.
Indeed. I remember being laughed at incredulously by some Tory friends (who thought they knew better) in advance of the 2015 election when I said I thought Cameron would get a small majority. Maybe it was a lucky guess (and I did milk it afterwards), but I think there is a reasonable chance Labour will get a majority after the next one. (Waiting for HY to start a response with "no")
If Labour want to increase their chances of a majority, they need to persuade Slab to stop shooting themselves in the foot by continuing to alienate their former voters who are not as anti an Indyref as their leaders. If Starmer can do that, he will have a better chance.
Seems rather unlikely given that Sir Keir is attacking the Tories for being a threat to the Union. I think he's made his choice and it isn't to meet pro-Indy half-way.
However like many such people, it's probably hard to disentangle business from pleasure: e.g. he may go somewhere nice with the kids and have a few meetings, and call it 'working'.
Like Bill Gates reading every line of Microsoft's code, or Steve Jobs designing everything Apple made, it's rubbish.
I know someone that has met him a few times, so I am not sure it is. He is a one off, and not necessarily in a good way.
For a man worth seven trillion dollars, Musk is weirdly and easily annoyed by minor people on Twitter with 6 followers. Quite strange
He is a very weird dude all-round...the few long form interviews he has done with Joe Rogan and Lex Fridman only reinforces that.
Indeed, but we definitely need more Elon Musks in the world.
The Fridman interview especially, is worth watching.
The comments I've had from past colleagues who actually met him, is that there seem to be two Elon's. Bored Elon = Bad Elon. Better Elon is when he has something to do - preferably solving a numerical or physical problem.
Oh wow. Didn’t see these before, there goes my evening
Love what SpaceX are doing, it’s truly groundbreaking work for humanity, the likes of which we last saw in the 1960s.
Tim Dodd (the Everyday Astronaut) is generally excellent.
Indeed so, this is a good watch so far. I’ve generally been a Scott Manley guy when it comes to space Youtube stuff.
Musk is very relaxed when asked the more technical questions, in the way that you never usually see a CEO in their workplace, surrounded as they normally are by lawyers and PRs.
On a slightly different topic, the Fridman interview with Musk referenced the idea that Fridman might have an interview set up with Putin (Fridman is of Russian origin). That would be astonishing if he could pull it off, but I have a feeling the Ukranian situation might have put paid to it.
However like many such people, it's probably hard to disentangle business from pleasure: e.g. he may go somewhere nice with the kids and have a few meetings, and call it 'working'.
Like Bill Gates reading every line of Microsoft's code, or Steve Jobs designing everything Apple made, it's rubbish.
I know someone that has met him a few times, so I am not sure it is. He is a one off, and not necessarily in a good way.
For a man worth seven trillion dollars, Musk is weirdly and easily annoyed by minor people on Twitter with 6 followers. Quite strange
He is a very weird dude all-round...the few long form interviews he has done with Joe Rogan and Lex Fridman only reinforces that.
Indeed, but we definitely need more Elon Musks in the world.
The Fridman interview especially, is worth watching.
A guy who I shared an office with when doing my PhD was rather similar individual.
On one occasion we had one of the most famous academics in our field come for a visit as they were thinking of changing institutions and a personal friend of our supervisor, and the whole exercise was to butter him up with examples of the interesting work we had been doing.
Academic comes into our lab, asks mini Elon Musk what he had been working on, Mini Elon shows him, world famous academic says interesting, its a bit like my work on such and such, did you try this....Mini Elon sits there in silence for an uncomfortable long time, before telling him to his face his whole research was based upon a flawed premise.
Years ago I read a story in a book: annoyingly, I do not know if it was a fictional story or a real one. A maths professor was teaching PhD students at a uni. He had made his name decades before with a theorem. One day, a very bright student asked to have a word with him, and over the course of a few hours comprehensively demolished his theorem.
The professor checked and rechecked, and then broke into tears and said: "Thanks for proving me wrong."
It was used as an example of how academics should be, but rarely are. I wish I remembered where I read it...
The Periodic Videos series on Youtube includes one where the Prof talks about one of his researchers correcting one of his (the Prof's) early results.
“Not really. If you spend money on holidays, for a family, you tend to end up in something like that. Unless you really fight the demand for luxury bathrooms etc.”
+++++
I do not wish to pry into PB-ears private circumstances, but this is an intriguing comment
If you had a family holiday here - the Galle hotel we have been discussing - you’d need three rooms for yourself, one for you and the partner, two for the kids
But let’s budget and say just two rooms, and the kids share
Rooms are £500 a night. That’s £1000 a night. For two weeks that’s £14,000. Add in flights to Sri Lanka, trips, and the rest, and you’re heading for £20,000. For a winter holiday
Exactly how wealthy is the average PB-er?!
Well I push up the average lol.
Good to hear!
I’m quite well off, I guess, but I would blink furiously at dropping £20k on a winter holiday
In my professional capacity for the Knappers Gazette I’ve done trips that would have cost £100,000 for 2 weeks. They were great fun. But they certainly weren’t worth £100,000. I suppose some people are just so rich it doesn’t matter
Spend £100k every two weeks and it adds up to £2.6m in a year, or £26m in a decade.
There have been a few lottery jackpots that would still be left largely intact after that.
The economics of the holiday industry baffle me. I don't feel well-off. But I know what the average family income is, and we earn a fair bit more than that. I usually tick one of the top two boxes in surveys on the 'household income' page. And while I'll never feel entirely comfortable, we're probably top decile for capital. And yet almost all holidays I see advertised are wildly, wildly unaffordable. I consider £3000 for a week away for five towards the upper end of extravagant. Yet almost any foreign family holiday that isn't transparently worse than staying at home seems to be more than this. I simply don't understand how this works. There surely can't be that many people who can afford a holiday like this every year. And don't get me started on Disneyland. Not that I want to go - but I don't see how more than a tiny proportion of the population can ever afford it.
The average family holiday to Spain or France, even in the height of summer, would cost far less than £3,000 probably under £1,000
Well maybe. But just getting four return tickets by air in the school holidays would cost over £1000. There must be cheap holidays out there - or no-one would be able to afford holidays at all. But those that I've seen look awful - at least compared to the option of staying at home. I don't know much about the abroad market. But I know a fair bit about the British market. And it's dashed difficult to get a self-catering place for 5 in the school holidays for much under £1000.
Many Scots take advantage of the different school summer holiday dates to fly from Manchester or Newcastle at lower rates before the start of the English holidays. I assume that families in the North of England also take advantage by flying from Edinburgh or Glasgow after the end of the Scottish holidays.
It can only be a matter of time before someone from Leicestershire gloats that they have different holidays and pay half the price.
Stephen Bush @stephenkb · 4h Yet to see a poll or sit in on a focus group where it's not clear that people a) think that the allegations are true and b) expect there to be some kind of fix or cover-up.
The public get a lot wrong or misunderstand a lot, but occasionally they absolutely nail it.
And even if they're not right (NARRATOR: they are), it doesn't really matter. Once the public are set in a belief, it's damn hard to shift them.
The government ratings have bounced up off the worst of the precipice. But it will never be glad confident morning for Bozza again.
Dead cat bounce, just wait and see the effect of this latest nonsense
Actually, although we have had our differences on this matter, I think there could be something in this. The delay/dilution just looks terrible. It's the sort of thing that cuts through: er, why are they doing this now?
So we have a situation where the Met are saying it's only penalty notices, and the former DPP Macdonald ( and Starmer, it looks like ) both seem to think what is going on makes no sense, in that case.
Just what exactly is going on ?
The main questions I have are: Why did Sue Gray involve the police? Why did the police decide to investigate? Why is the report content impacted by the fact they are now investigating?
The answers would be obvious if we were talking about serious offences but we aren't. Partygate is a massive political scandal about the lies & hypocrisy of Boris Johnson. But as a criminal matter it's utterly trivial.
So it's not quite scanning for me at the moment.
Hint - it is never the crime that gets you but the cover up.
I suspect the issue is deleting emails or something similar after being told not to...
But if you are deleting emails (before plod was involved) them you are deleting emails about parking in the wrong place or somesuch minor infringement big deal.
“Not really. If you spend money on holidays, for a family, you tend to end up in something like that. Unless you really fight the demand for luxury bathrooms etc.”
+++++
I do not wish to pry into PB-ears private circumstances, but this is an intriguing comment
If you had a family holiday here - the Galle hotel we have been discussing - you’d need three rooms for yourself, one for you and the partner, two for the kids
But let’s budget and say just two rooms, and the kids share
Rooms are £500 a night. That’s £1000 a night. For two weeks that’s £14,000. Add in flights to Sri Lanka, trips, and the rest, and you’re heading for £20,000. For a winter holiday
Exactly how wealthy is the average PB-er?!
Well I push up the average lol.
Good to hear!
I’m quite well off, I guess, but I would blink furiously at dropping £20k on a winter holiday
In my professional capacity for the Knappers Gazette I’ve done trips that would have cost £100,000 for 2 weeks. They were great fun. But they certainly weren’t worth £100,000. I suppose some people are just so rich it doesn’t matter
Spend £100k every two weeks and it adds up to £2.6m in a year, or £26m in a decade.
There have been a few lottery jackpots that would still be left largely intact after that.
The economics of the holiday industry baffle me. I don't feel well-off. But I know what the average family income is, and we earn a fair bit more than that. I usually tick one of the top two boxes in surveys on the 'household income' page. And while I'll never feel entirely comfortable, we're probably top decile for capital. And yet almost all holidays I see advertised are wildly, wildly unaffordable. I consider £3000 for a week away for five towards the upper end of extravagant. Yet almost any foreign family holiday that isn't transparently worse than staying at home seems to be more than this. I simply don't understand how this works. There surely can't be that many people who can afford a holiday like this every year. And don't get me started on Disneyland. Not that I want to go - but I don't see how more than a tiny proportion of the population can ever afford it.
The average family holiday to Spain or France, even in the height of summer, would cost far less than £3,000 probably under £1,000
Well maybe. But just getting four return tickets by air in the school holidays would cost over £1000. There must be cheap holidays out there - or no-one would be able to afford holidays at all. But those that I've seen look awful - at least compared to the option of staying at home. I don't know much about the abroad market. But I know a fair bit about the British market. And it's dashed difficult to get a self-catering place for 5 in the school holidays for much under £1000.
A family holiday in France or Spain for under £1000, for a fortnight, during the school hols? How? Surely impossible, unless you drive and camp or something, and do it mega cheap, buying all your food in the nearest Aldi
How many do that?
I guess for a week at a two star hotel, but even then you’d be hard pushed with a family
2 weeks in Benidorm for 2 adults and 2 children in July for £761 here
You can pompously pontificate as much as you want but Boris is staying, tough.
If you want to go off and vote LD be my guest, as soon as the going gets a bit tough for the Tories you are off half the time anyway, as when you voted for Blair and New Labour in 1997 and 2001.
Stephen Bush @stephenkb · 4h Yet to see a poll or sit in on a focus group where it's not clear that people a) think that the allegations are true and b) expect there to be some kind of fix or cover-up.
The public get a lot wrong or misunderstand a lot, but occasionally they absolutely nail it.
And even if they're not right (NARRATOR: they are), it doesn't really matter. Once the public are set in a belief, it's damn hard to shift them.
The government ratings have bounced up off the worst of the precipice. But it will never be glad confident morning for Bozza again.
Dead cat bounce, just wait and see the effect of this latest nonsense
Actually, although we have had our differences on this matter, I think there could be something in this. The delay/dilution just looks terrible. It's the sort of thing that cuts through: er, why are they doing this now?
Starmer should be attacking the Met as it is clearly an utter nonsense, but then he is compromised by his connections to the Met and the CPS
I think Rishi has blown it. Like Michael Portillo and David Miliband before him, he'll been seen as a politician who had the great prize within his grasp but wibbled.
Spot on, in the end Portillo failed to oust Major and Miliband failed to oust Brown and neither either ended up leaders of their party, loosing to IDS in 2001 and Ed Miliband in 2010 respectively.
Though Portillo has had a successful post politics career doing rail programmes and Miliband is head of international rescue in Manhattan so all not lost for Sunak longer term.
I wouldn't get too excited that your idol is in the clear. Whether it is Sunak or someone else, The Clown will not last past June IMO. There is just too much on him, and the vultures are just holding off until he is a little more wounded.
My humble prediction is that the drip drip of allegations and insinuations will ensure he ends up with a terrible result in May. MPs in more marginal constituencies will apply the swing to their GE result and take action. Whether it will be too late to prevent a Labour win at the next GE is open to conjecture.
As long as polls continue to show a hung parliament and a Labour lead under 10% and as long as the Tories hold Westminster and Kensington and Chelsea in May and as long as the Met and Gray inquiries find Boris did not do anything criminal. Then I predict Boris will still be PM and lead the Tories at the next general election
Hung Parliament on under 10% Labour lead?
Write out 100 times "Uniform National Swing does not work in the grand scheme of United Kingdom General Elections".
It does, on UNS on the new boundaries even a 9% Labour lead only leads to Labour 309 seats and Tories 246.
Labour still 17 short of a majority. Plus Starmer Labour is still not seen as as centrist as Blair's New Labour by the middle classes, even if not as bad as Corbyn Labour. So while they might tactically vote LD, they are much less likely to tactically vote Labour.
I am not, there is a 99% chance Starmer will not become PM with a majority in my view, even if he becomes PM with LD and SNP support in a hung parliament
I don't dispute that because of Scotland, but when you get to 6 to 7 percent all sorts of permutations come into play. You should be more concerned at the LD improvement today because you now have Labour to contend with on your left flank and the LDs to contend with on your not quite so left flank.
Indeed. I remember being laughed at incredulously by some Tory friends (who thought they knew better) in advance of the 2015 election when I said I thought Cameron would get a small majority. Maybe it was a lucky guess (and I did milk it afterwards), but I think there is a reasonable chance Labour will get a majority after the next one. (Waiting for HY to start a response with "no")
If Labour want to increase their chances of a majority, they need to persuade Slab to stop shooting themselves in the foot by continuing to alienate their former voters who are not as anti an Indyref as their leaders. If Starmer can do that, he will have a better chance.
I agree, and don't know why Slab don't just adopt a neutral position on Scindy. Let the candidates decide – I suspect there are thousands of potential Labourites who are pro-Indy.
“Not really. If you spend money on holidays, for a family, you tend to end up in something like that. Unless you really fight the demand for luxury bathrooms etc.”
+++++
I do not wish to pry into PB-ears private circumstances, but this is an intriguing comment
If you had a family holiday here - the Galle hotel we have been discussing - you’d need three rooms for yourself, one for you and the partner, two for the kids
But let’s budget and say just two rooms, and the kids share
Rooms are £500 a night. That’s £1000 a night. For two weeks that’s £14,000. Add in flights to Sri Lanka, trips, and the rest, and you’re heading for £20,000. For a winter holiday
Exactly how wealthy is the average PB-er?!
Well I push up the average lol.
Good to hear!
I’m quite well off, I guess, but I would blink furiously at dropping £20k on a winter holiday
In my professional capacity for the Knappers Gazette I’ve done trips that would have cost £100,000 for 2 weeks. They were great fun. But they certainly weren’t worth £100,000. I suppose some people are just so rich it doesn’t matter
Spend £100k every two weeks and it adds up to £2.6m in a year, or £26m in a decade.
There have been a few lottery jackpots that would still be left largely intact after that.
The economics of the holiday industry baffle me. I don't feel well-off. But I know what the average family income is, and we earn a fair bit more than that. I usually tick one of the top two boxes in surveys on the 'household income' page. And while I'll never feel entirely comfortable, we're probably top decile for capital. And yet almost all holidays I see advertised are wildly, wildly unaffordable. I consider £3000 for a week away for five towards the upper end of extravagant. Yet almost any foreign family holiday that isn't transparently worse than staying at home seems to be more than this. I simply don't understand how this works. There surely can't be that many people who can afford a holiday like this every year. And don't get me started on Disneyland. Not that I want to go - but I don't see how more than a tiny proportion of the population can ever afford it.
The average family holiday to Spain or France, even in the height of summer, would cost far less than £3,000 probably under £1,000
Well maybe. But just getting four return tickets by air in the school holidays would cost over £1000. There must be cheap holidays out there - or no-one would be able to afford holidays at all. But those that I've seen look awful - at least compared to the option of staying at home. I don't know much about the abroad market. But I know a fair bit about the British market. And it's dashed difficult to get a self-catering place for 5 in the school holidays for much under £1000.
Many Scots take advantage of the different school summer holiday dates to fly from Manchester or Newcastle at lower rates before the start of the English holidays. I assume that families in the North of England also take advantage by flying from Edinburgh or Glasgow after the end of the Scottish holidays.
When I commuted, my holidays often cost me less than being at work.
If you ignore the cost of the expedition tent, down sleeping bags and all the rest...
Stephen Bush @stephenkb · 4h Yet to see a poll or sit in on a focus group where it's not clear that people a) think that the allegations are true and b) expect there to be some kind of fix or cover-up.
The public get a lot wrong or misunderstand a lot, but occasionally they absolutely nail it.
And even if they're not right (NARRATOR: they are), it doesn't really matter. Once the public are set in a belief, it's damn hard to shift them.
The government ratings have bounced up off the worst of the precipice. But it will never be glad confident morning for Bozza again.
Dead cat bounce, just wait and see the effect of this latest nonsense
Actually, although we have had our differences on this matter, I think there could be something in this. The delay/dilution just looks terrible. It's the sort of thing that cuts through: er, why are they doing this now?
Starmer should be attacking the Met as it is clearly an utter nonsense, but then he is compromised by his connections to the Met and the CPS
So we have a situation where the Met are saying it's only penalty notices, and the former DPP Macdonald ( and Starmer, it looks like ) both seem to think what is going on makes no sense, in that case.
Just what exactly is going on ?
The main questions I have are: Why did Sue Gray involve the police? Why did the police decide to investigate? Why is the report content impacted by the fact they are now investigating?
The answers would be obvious if we were talking about serious offences but we aren't. Partygate is a massive political scandal about the lies & hypocrisy of Boris Johnson. But as a criminal matter it's utterly trivial.
So it's not quite scanning for me at the moment.
Hint - it is never the crime that gets you but the cover up.
I suspect the issue is deleting emails or something similar after being told not to...
That would maybe make the plot line a little less nonsensical. Otherwise, this police "investigation" should take all of a morning with time for coffee and biscuits at 11. Just cross reference the SG report to the relevant legislation.
How many staff (if any) did Sue Gray have at her disposal? Surely the Met should be able to turn round this investigation by the end of next week. Doesn’t exactly require Sherlock does it.
I think Rishi has blown it. Like Michael Portillo and David Miliband before him, he'll been seen as a politician who had the great prize within his grasp but wibbled.
Spot on, in the end Portillo failed to oust Major and Miliband failed to oust Brown and neither either ended up leaders of their party, loosing to IDS in 2001 and Ed Miliband in 2010 respectively.
Though Portillo has had a successful post politics career doing rail programmes and Miliband is head of international rescue in Manhattan so all not lost for Sunak longer term.
I wouldn't get too excited that your idol is in the clear. Whether it is Sunak or someone else, The Clown will not last past June IMO. There is just too much on him, and the vultures are just holding off until he is a little more wounded.
My humble prediction is that the drip drip of allegations and insinuations will ensure he ends up with a terrible result in May. MPs in more marginal constituencies will apply the swing to their GE result and take action. Whether it will be too late to prevent a Labour win at the next GE is open to conjecture.
As long as polls continue to show a hung parliament and a Labour lead under 10% and as long as the Tories hold Westminster and Kensington and Chelsea in May and as long as the Met and Gray inquiries find Boris did not do anything criminal. Then I predict Boris will still be PM and lead the Tories at the next general election
Hung Parliament on under 10% Labour lead?
Write out 100 times "Uniform National Swing does not work in the grand scheme of United Kingdom General Elections".
It does, on UNS on the new boundaries even a 9% Labour lead only leads to Labour 309 seats and Tories 246.
Labour still 17 short of a majority. Plus Starmer Labour is still not seen as as centrist as Blair's New Labour by the middle classes, even if not as bad as Corbyn Labour. So while they might tactically vote LD, they are much less likely to tactically vote Labour.
I am not, there is a 99% chance Starmer will not become PM with a majority in my view, even if he becomes PM with LD and SNP support in a hung parliament
I don't dispute that because of Scotland, but when you get to 6 to 7 percent all sorts of permutations come into play. You should be more concerned at the LD improvement today because you now have Labour to contend with on your left flank and the LDs to contend with on your not quite so left flank.
Indeed. I remember being laughed at incredulously by some Tory friends (who thought they knew better) in advance of the 2015 election when I said I thought Cameron would get a small majority. Maybe it was a lucky guess (and I did milk it afterwards), but I think there is a reasonable chance Labour will get a majority after the next one. (Waiting for HY to start a response with "no")
If Labour want to increase their chances of a majority, they need to persuade Slab to stop shooting themselves in the foot by continuing to alienate their former voters who are not as anti an Indyref as their leaders. If Starmer can do that, he will have a better chance.
Only has to order them to [edit] shut up and love indyref2. It's not as if Slab were separate or anything. Jenny Formby could yank Kezia Dugdale's chain simply by cutting off the money and did (over KD's court case).
The problem may be more in England, given the Tories' obvious reaction.
I've read (think it was the Times) that Labour's strategy is to consistently bash the SNP and Sturgeon till the next election, because it'll convince swing voters in Lab-Con marginals that there won't be a deal with the SNP. When Starmer brought out that line about someone in Scotland needing a blood transfusion not caring about where the blood came from, the target audience probably wasn't pro-independence voters in Scotland.
Stephen Bush @stephenkb · 4h Yet to see a poll or sit in on a focus group where it's not clear that people a) think that the allegations are true and b) expect there to be some kind of fix or cover-up.
The public get a lot wrong or misunderstand a lot, but occasionally they absolutely nail it.
And even if they're not right (NARRATOR: they are), it doesn't really matter. Once the public are set in a belief, it's damn hard to shift them.
The government ratings have bounced up off the worst of the precipice. But it will never be glad confident morning for Bozza again.
Dead cat bounce, just wait and see the effect of this latest nonsense
Actually, although we have had our differences on this matter, I think there could be something in this. The delay/dilution just looks terrible. It's the sort of thing that cuts through: er, why are they doing this now?
So we have a situation where the Met are saying it's only penalty notices, and the former DPP Macdonald ( and Starmer, it looks like ) both seem to think what is going on makes no sense, in that case.
Just what exactly is going on ?
The main questions I have are: Why did Sue Gray involve the police? Why did the police decide to investigate? Why is the report content impacted by the fact they are now investigating?
The answers would be obvious if we were talking about serious offences but we aren't. Partygate is a massive political scandal about the lies & hypocrisy of Boris Johnson. But as a criminal matter it's utterly trivial.
So it's not quite scanning for me at the moment.
It's totally scanning for me. Not in a good way.
The Met acting to save Johnson's political skin? I can see it as a distinct possibility, yes, but gosh that would be dark. It'd also be very hamfisted since it looks SO obvious. Everyone is pretty much saying it. Incredibly risky too. It'll likely come out if that's what's going on here. At which point, well I wouldn't like to predict, but that's a bigger scandal than the one we thought we had.
“Not really. If you spend money on holidays, for a family, you tend to end up in something like that. Unless you really fight the demand for luxury bathrooms etc.”
+++++
I do not wish to pry into PB-ears private circumstances, but this is an intriguing comment
If you had a family holiday here - the Galle hotel we have been discussing - you’d need three rooms for yourself, one for you and the partner, two for the kids
But let’s budget and say just two rooms, and the kids share
Rooms are £500 a night. That’s £1000 a night. For two weeks that’s £14,000. Add in flights to Sri Lanka, trips, and the rest, and you’re heading for £20,000. For a winter holiday
Exactly how wealthy is the average PB-er?!
Well I push up the average lol.
Good to hear!
I’m quite well off, I guess, but I would blink furiously at dropping £20k on a winter holiday
In my professional capacity for the Knappers Gazette I’ve done trips that would have cost £100,000 for 2 weeks. They were great fun. But they certainly weren’t worth £100,000. I suppose some people are just so rich it doesn’t matter
Spend £100k every two weeks and it adds up to £2.6m in a year, or £26m in a decade.
There have been a few lottery jackpots that would still be left largely intact after that.
The economics of the holiday industry baffle me. I don't feel well-off. But I know what the average family income is, and we earn a fair bit more than that. I usually tick one of the top two boxes in surveys on the 'household income' page. And while I'll never feel entirely comfortable, we're probably top decile for capital. And yet almost all holidays I see advertised are wildly, wildly unaffordable. I consider £3000 for a week away for five towards the upper end of extravagant. Yet almost any foreign family holiday that isn't transparently worse than staying at home seems to be more than this. I simply don't understand how this works. There surely can't be that many people who can afford a holiday like this every year. And don't get me started on Disneyland. Not that I want to go - but I don't see how more than a tiny proportion of the population can ever afford it.
The average family holiday to Spain or France, even in the height of summer, would cost far less than £3,000 probably under £1,000
Well maybe. But just getting four return tickets by air in the school holidays would cost over £1000. There must be cheap holidays out there - or no-one would be able to afford holidays at all. But those that I've seen look awful - at least compared to the option of staying at home. I don't know much about the abroad market. But I know a fair bit about the British market. And it's dashed difficult to get a self-catering place for 5 in the school holidays for much under £1000.
A family holiday in France or Spain for under £1000, for a fortnight, during the school hols? How? Surely impossible, unless you drive and camp or something, and do it mega cheap, buying all your food in the nearest Aldi
How many do that?
I guess for a week at a two star hotel, but even then you’d be hard pushed with a family
2 weeks in Benidorm for 2 adults and 2 children in July for £761 here
You can pompously pontificate as much as you want but Boris is staying, tough.
If you want to go off and vote LD be my guest, as soon as the going gets a bit tough for the Tories you are off half the time anyway, as when you voted for Blair and New Labour in 1997 and 2001.
You are no better than a Man United glory hunter!
You quoted room only
Again you have not taken a family away on holiday as you clearly do not understand that food, drink, entertainment, excursions and insurance adds hugely to that quote
The time will come when you will be cheering Rishi to the rafters
So we have a situation where the Met are saying it's only penalty notices, and the former DPP Macdonald ( and Starmer, it looks like ) both seem to think what is going on makes no sense, in that case.
Just what exactly is going on ?
The main questions I have are: Why did Sue Gray involve the police? Why did the police decide to investigate? Why is the report content impacted by the fact they are now investigating?
The answers would be obvious if we were talking about serious offences but we aren't. Partygate is a massive political scandal about the lies & hypocrisy of Boris Johnson. But as a criminal matter it's utterly trivial.
So it's not quite scanning for me at the moment.
It's totally scanning for me. Not in a good way.
The Met acting to save Johnson's political skin? I can see it as a distinct possibility, yes, but gosh that would be dark. It'd also be very hamfisted since it looks SO obvious. Everyone is pretty much saying it. Incredibly risky too. It'll likely come out if that's what's going on here. At which point, well I wouldn't like to predict, but that's a bigger scandal than the one we thought we had.
That is what's so strange. It looks so obvious. Could they really have been that dumb ?
Comments
I have another 10 or so years to live, though, before I'll be older than my mother was when she died.
I shall do my best!
Love what SpaceX are doing, it’s truly groundbreaking work for humanity, the likes of which we last saw in the 1960s.
The professor checked and rechecked, and then broke into tears and said: "Thanks for proving me wrong."
It was used as an example of how academics should be, but rarely are. I wish I remembered where I read it...
I prefer snorkelling. The vast majority of the interest is in the top 10 meters as light dependent, and the freedom of snorkelling much nicer than the claustrophobia of diving kit, but that is a personal thing really. Once below 10 meters the risks go up and the interest goes down.
Deepti Gurdasani
@dgurdasani1
·
1h
Sorry, just deleted and repost this thread due to an important error- the frequency of omicron BA.2 in England as per the ONS report of 19th Jan was 5.5%, *not* 22%. The rest of the thread is the same. Indeed – grim – so why bother?
Stag do locations for a mountain loving group of friends with non-PB salaries. Adventurous, rustic, basic locations sought.
Thinking something like the Tatras (but been there before).
Suppose it's ticks the adventurous box.
Driving becomes the only way you might be able to make it work.
The problem is it takes so many things aside from just intelligence and a great work habit: for instance, I have a rather low risk-taking mindset which means there's no way I'd take some of the insane gambles Musk took with his first minor fortune. Then there's luck and opportunity. Or Job's Reality Distortion Field.
I think you also need to be a sh*t at times. Jobs certainly was, Musk was, and even Gates was at times - e.g. the way he treated Paul Allen over shares.
https://latimesblogs.latimes.com/technology/2011/03/microsoft-co-founder-paul-allen-says-bill-gates-schemed-to-dilute-his-share.html
(*) Because she might be reading this.
and here's the proof
https://www.jet2holidays.com/search/results?airport=1&date=23-08-2022&duration=7&occupancy=r2c5_7&destination=37&sortorder=1&page=1
You clearly have not taken a family of four on holiday nor do you realise just how much it does cost
Your posts are rapidly losing any credibility and I would just warn you that declaring Rishi over is hope over expectation
Indeed the report could be issued on Monday and Boris out next week,
An acceptance that you provided fake holiday news would be a first, you just find it impossible to believe you can be wrong
The answers would be obvious if we were talking about serious offences but we aren't. Partygate is a massive political scandal about the lies & hypocrisy of Boris Johnson. But as a criminal matter it's utterly trivial.
So it's not quite scanning for me at the moment.
I know of a UK tech entrepreneur, probably the most brilliant person I have ever met and has done very well in life, but if he had been born maybe 15 years later he could well have been talked about in the same circles as Jobs or Gates. Back in the day, he did work a fair bit with the likes of Jobs, but a number of their brilliant ideas were 15 years too soon, but are now commonplace.
@stephenkb
·
4h
Yet to see a poll or sit in on a focus group where it's not clear that people a) think that the allegations are true and b) expect there to be some kind of fix or cover-up.
https://twitter.com/stephenkb
I took it as a hint to move away from academic research. Not that I'm conceding that he was right or anything.
I've booked a Jet 2 holiday in the past arrived at the hotel and immediately decamped via taxi because it was cheaper than the flights themselves.
If the latter then if it had just happened to be a week later I rather suspect we would now all be reading the Gray report.
I suspect the issue is deleting emails or something similar after being told not to...
Is it PER PERSON?
Hah. Yes I see you right. AND it is four people sharing a room
I like @HYUFD’s posts, in general, I admire his unswerving commitment, like a shark. But posting bollox like that does not aid his cause
The government ratings have bounced up off the worst of the precipice. But it will never be glad confident morning for Bozza again.
- Cases. Flat. R = 1 overall, But signs of another fall. R for older groups is below 1
- Admissions - R is solidly below 1. Down
- MV Beds - Down
- In hospital - Down
- Deaths - Down
Not in a good way.
https://www.mumsnet.com/Talk/am_i_being_unreasonable/4465426-Aibu-to-Think-that-it-Will-be-easy-enough-to-go-on-a-ski-holiday-with-a-5-7-and-8-year-Old-without-putting-the-kids-in-ski-School
Only 1 parent skis, plans to teach the other parent and a 5,7 and 8 year old for a weeks skiing holiday on a mountain.
It took an Einstein to show where Newton was wrong. It doesn't trivialise Newton.
https://www.dailymail.co.uk/news/article-10451357/Partygate-report-minimal-reference-potential-crimes.html
https://www.dailymail.co.uk/news/article-10449863/Free-tickets-football-matches-night-Brit-Awards-Lavish-hospitality-mandarin.html
DCMS top civil servant attended a bunch of test events and received some hospitality last year. So what? Is this “story” related to another story that can’t be talked about, is it something that will be seen in the future as linked to a much more significant story. The Mail had it as one of their top half dozen headline stories yesterday. Why?
The problem may be more in England, given the Tories' obvious reaction.
Still: it's going to be *extremely* hard to get all in costs below GBP1,000. You basically will need to get a one bedroom in a two star hotel or a self catering studio flat. And you will be in a tertiary location.
Musk is very relaxed when asked the more technical questions, in the way that you never usually see a CEO in their workplace, surrounded as they normally are by lawyers and PRs.
On a slightly different topic, the Fridman interview with Musk referenced the idea that Fridman might have an interview set up with Putin (Fridman is of Russian origin). That would be astonishing if he could pull it off, but I have a feeling the Ukranian situation might have put paid to it.
https://www.easyjet.com/en/holidays/spain/costa-blanca/benidorm/avenida-apartments?ibf=true&to=09-07-2022&from=01-07-2022&dst=ESCBBE&geog=ES,ESCB,ESCBBE&sAccId=&flex=0&org[0]=LGW&org[1]=LTN&aa=0&rooms[0][adults]=2&rooms[0][children]=2&rooms[0][infants]=0&rooms[0][childrenAges][0]=10&rooms[0][childrenAges][1]=12&outId=E69c14b5446f06f85666a2d91be9f094b&inId=Ea6069d5fb3169b2d5ef893ae39aa2ec9&accId=ESCB0051&packId=2157195022/2/1642/8&offerCode=ESCB0051_2157195022/2/1642/8_1BA01-SC&boardType=SC&offerRooms[0][adults]=2&offerRooms[0][children]=2&offerRooms[0][infants]=0&offerRooms[0][childrenAges][0]=12&offerRooms[0][childrenAges][1]=10&offerRooms[0][roomCode]=1BA01&transfer=W2MS007823SS&dtransfer=W2MS007823SS&isExt=0&lateRoomCheckout=0&theme=beach&__ejhsort=hotels_list|13|S2B8pieI
You also do not have to go abroad you could go to Blackpool for a week even in July with 2 children for under £500
https://www.expedia.co.uk/Hotel-Search?adults=2&chid=f97bd010-7f62-49ca-ba62-b5c1b2bb2bda&children=1_6,1_6&destination=Blackpool, England, United Kingdom&directFlights=false&endDate=2022-07-15&hotels-destination=Blackpool, England, United Kingdom&hotels-destination=Blackpool, England, United Kingdom&langid=2057&localDateFormat=d/M/yyyy&mctc=5&mdpcid=UK.META.TRIVAGO.HOTELSCORESEARCH.HOTEL&mdpdtl=HTL.3534809.Blackpool.los=15.losb=15.ttt=161.tttb=91.trv_bm=-1.pg=1.defdate=0.guests=4.guestsb=3.cpa=0.device=-1.a2a=00.ht=0&mrp=0&paandi=true&partialStay=false&regionId=619&selected=3534809&semdtl=&sort=RECOMMENDED&startDate=2022-07-08&theme=&trv_reference=cadba39a-f222-489b-a5d7-d2a10c5cd8be&useRewards=false&userIntent=.
You can pompously pontificate as much as you want but Boris is staying, tough.
If you want to go off and vote LD be my guest, as soon as the going gets a bit tough for the Tories you are off half the time anyway, as when you voted for Blair and New Labour in 1997 and 2001.
You are no better than a Man United glory hunter!
If you ignore the cost of the expedition tent, down sleeping bags and all the rest...
Again you have not taken a family away on holiday as you clearly do not understand that food, drink, entertainment, excursions and insurance adds hugely to that quote
The time will come when you will be cheering Rishi to the rafters
"I have watched some YouTube videos to try and learn the basics"
Though as ever... despite the question being firmly answered within the first few posts, everyone has to come in for a pile-on.