Sky reporting the drought in Europe is very serious with river levels threatening shipping and the Rhine may become impassable for ships carrying coal and petrol later this week
I was going to write 'it never rains but it pours', but I guess that's not an apt idiom at the moment.
Nevertheless, there seems to be a relentless torrent of bad news.
If I recall correctly Jim Callaghan appointed Dennis Howell as Minister for Drought in August 1976. Almost immediately it poured with rain. Problem sorted by a Labour government!
Denis Howell was so successful as Minister for Drought that immediately afterwards, he was appointed Minister for Floods.
Mr. Z, that's why redundancy is so important. Solar energy is great now in the UK, hydroelectric less so. Similarly, we should have more reserves of gas and the capacity to increase supply at will (whether that's gas or nuclear).
The opposite of the UK's shareholder private model over 40 years. Thatcher's legacy on public utilities has failed in just about every conceivable social and economic way, except for shareholder dividends.
It allowed the baby boomer generation to live more pleasant prosperous lives than they otherwise would have done, with asset sales plugging a perennial current account deficit. So there is that I suppose. Not much good for the rest of us.
If you're in a seat that's been trending Conservative for several elections like Don Valley/Rother Valley/ Sedgefield, Bishop Auckland, the Stoke seats, you probably don't have much to worry about. These are all heading into the safe Conservative camp.
If you're in a seat that was just a fluke win, like Burnley, Leigh, you should be looking for another job.
If you're in a classic marginal, like Darlington, or High Peak, everything turns on the national state of play.
I like the clarity of the analysis though I don't fully agree. The trend may eventually secure your red wall seat by 2030, but losing Johnson / less Brexit agitation / energy bills could threaten any incumbent in particular. (There's a bigger conversation to have on PB about how long those trends will continue.)
I think the bigger issue in the first category of seats is that Labour, for a long time, punched above their socio-economic weight, because the memory of coal-mining was so strong. As the miners and ex-miners died off, thee seats moved rightwards at a rate of knots, as did (in earlier times) seats like Forest of Dean, NE Somerset, NW Leics. etc. Look at the swings to the Conservatives in these , since 1997, and they're in the high 20s, low 30s%.
And, mainly, the ex-mining seats are nice places to live. Housing is very affordable, relative to incomes, the cost of living is low, and the countryside is beautiful.
Countryside. The very nature of mine workings makes large areas of land unsuitable for building or farming. Plus you've got hills (slag heaps) and flashes where the workings have caved under rainfall to make lakes, on what was previously often a dull, flat landscape. Add 30 years to grow wild, and you've got some of the finest native habitats in England now.
There are a couple near us in W Yorkshire that are now RSPB nature reserves. Absolutely beautiful places. Housing nearby still cheap.
@Leon re the recipe you mentioned on the last thread, I've made it before and loved it. I think it was in Ottolenghi's book Simple which my ex had. But I'm pretty sure I can remember it..
I've just been to Waitrose and bought anchovies, capers, unwaxed lemon, basil, parsley, garlic and some nice bread.
Sky reporting the drought in Europe is very serious with river levels threatening shipping and the Rhine may become impassable for ships carrying coal and petrol later this week
I was going to write 'it never rains but it pours', but I guess that's not an apt idiom at the moment.
Nevertheless, there seems to be a relentless torrent of bad news.
If I recall correctly Jim Callaghan appointed Dennis Howell as Minister for Drought in August 1976. Almost immediately it poured with rain. Problem sorted by a Labour government!
Denis Howell was so successful as Minister for Drought that immediately afterwards, he was appointed Minister for Floods.
If only our current Minister of the Union had hung on longer he could have become the Minister for the Dissolution of said Union. He'd be pretty good at the dissolute bit.
FPT. We're going to finish up with the energy providers de facto nationalised, aren't we? Just a question of how long it takes for all other options to be tried. May as well get on with it.
Though until the Ukraine and Russia war is over and sanctions ended that won't make much difference to inflation. It would also likely require a Labour government to implement
You really don't think that's where the new PM will end up (barring a swift end to the war of course)? All other options look implausible and risk mass collapse of providers. Of course, it won't be called nationalisation. But it won't differ much in all but name.
Given Truss is set to have arch free marketeer Kwarteng as her Chancellor and bring arch free marketeers like John Redwood into her Cabinet as I said it won't happen in a government led by her.
It might happen in a government led by Starmer after the next general election however
Labour said this morning they are not looking at nationalising energy
How shit is Starmers Labour?! A genuine crisis and possibly essential need for a plank of Labour's historic position, nationalisation, and 'we arent looking at it'. They dont support strikes, they dont nationalise. What is the point of them?!
It's utterly mystifying. We've both said this morning that this is where we will end up anyways.
Labours Steve Reed rules out taking the energy companies into public ownership: "nationalising companies costs an awful lot of money"
The TUC have said nationalising the big 5 energy retailers would cost £2.8bn, which is how much the govt spent on bailing out just one (Bulb)
The Party is irrelevant to working people
Theyd rather the consumer spend an awful lot of money staying alive. An odd position to take.
Does anyone think we'll end up bunging less than another £2.8 bn at consumers? Looks cheap in the circumstances.
£2.8bn might be the cost of nationalisation but it is certainly not the cost of nationalisation plus mass subsidy.
Nationalisation doesn’t come cheaper than when the entity in question can’t meet its obligations. The money to bail out is needed regardless of ownership.
Companies like bulb don’t really need to exist. They buy their energy on the wholesale market and sell it to consumers. If they’ve fecked up their risk management then cheerio. The question then is to what extent consumers should be shielded from their poor decision in choosing a fixed tariff from a cowboy operator because Martin Lewis’s website told them it was a pound a month cheaper when they signed up.
Really if you’re not going to let these utility retailers fail when they deserve to and you’re going to spend billions insulating the consumer from it all too then you may as well just nationalise that segment of the energy industry. I would rather have a better regulated private sector that still allows firms to die and consumers to realise their penny pinching has consequences. But I appreciate that might be a minority view in the UK.
I don't understand why we baled out Bulb and spent 2 billion quid to let their customers keep their fixed rates, but let the customers of all the other suppliers which went broke go straight to the cap - it seems a particularly unfair way of wasting public money.
I'm with bulb, and I don't think it ever had fixed rates. From memory, it was single variable tarrif. I think the bulb issue was that they didn't bother with hedging much, so they banged their metaphorical head on the energy cap quickly and brutally.
No, I'm with Bulb too. Their selling point was that they had a single variable rate that wasn't a rip off and you didn't have to keep jumping tariffs.
Perhaps they didn't believe the long term price would ever go above the government cap.
It was a government decision to make them go bust, not a market one.
Inspired by @BlancheLivermore I have just had a magnificent Salad Caprese
How can anything so cheap & simple be that good?
To be fair, I did go out and buy the absolute best ingredients along Parkway, from £2 a pop rare heritage tomatoes, to a £20 bottle of Lia Premium olive oil
to some ultra-fresh basil, the best buffalo mozzarella imaginable, a loaf of Borough Sourdough (toasted and rubbed with raw garlic), to grated kampot peppercorns and Ynys Mon sea salt, so my cheap easy delicious salad has just cost me about £40. And I ate it with two glasses of Edda Lei Bianco San Marzano wine so if I did this cheap easy lunch every day I'd be bankrupt in three months, but WTF it's sunny and hot
Mr. Z, that's why redundancy is so important. Solar energy is great now in the UK, hydroelectric less so. Similarly, we should have more reserves of gas and the capacity to increase supply at will (whether that's gas or nuclear).
The opposite of the UK's shareholder private model over 40 years. Thatcher's legacy on public utilities has failed in just about every conceivable social and economic way, except for shareholder dividends.
It allowed the baby boomer generation to live more pleasant prosperous lives than they otherwise would have done, with asset sales plugging a perennial current account deficit. So there is that I suppose. Not much good for the rest of us.
@Leon re the recipe you mentioned on the last thread, I've made it before and loved it. I think it was in Ottolenghi's book Simple which my ex had. But I'm pretty sure I can remember it..
I've just been to Waitrose and bought anchovies, capers, unwaxed lemon, basil, parsley, garlic and some nice bread.
Can't wait to have dinner now!
Yes, that's the one. Ottolenghi's Simple. It's simply gorgeous - great with grilled tuna steaks, as he says. So light and fresh
And see my prior post, you inspired me to have a cheap, easy salad caprese and now I am penniless
FPT. We're going to finish up with the energy providers de facto nationalised, aren't we? Just a question of how long it takes for all other options to be tried. May as well get on with it.
Though until the Ukraine and Russia war is over and sanctions ended that won't make much difference to inflation. It would also likely require a Labour government to implement
You really don't think that's where the new PM will end up (barring a swift end to the war of course)? All other options look implausible and risk mass collapse of providers. Of course, it won't be called nationalisation. But it won't differ much in all but name.
Given Truss is set to have arch free marketeer Kwarteng as her Chancellor and bring arch free marketeers like John Redwood into her Cabinet as I said it won't happen in a government led by her.
It might happen in a government led by Starmer after the next general election however
Labour said this morning they are not looking at nationalising energy
I said might but given Labour is still committed to nationalising the railways again it would not take much of a shift
*) I've never been able to see the rationale for water privatisation, and it is one that seems an obvious choice for renationalisation. *) Energy nationalisation is massively more complex (e.g. which bits are you nationalising?), but with energy prices and energy company profits both rising, it seems an 'easy' win to say you'd do it. *) I've seen little evidence that railway renationalisation would help either the public purse or the paying passenger (aside from hopes and dreams of returning to the glory days of BR). But Labour will end up doing it anyway.
I'm also slightly surprised that Royal Mail renationalisaiton is not a bigger thing. Or perhaps more people are realising the postal service may be going the way of the DoDo?
Coincidentally, I had a long discussion with Thames Water's representatives yesterday (about an hour long - me as District Councillor, the County Councillor, and the local Parish Council).
They claimed that a key problem was that the regulator and central Government didn't have enough engagement with them on a variety of areas (water metering, leakage reduction, infrastructure proposals).
I will admit to some cynicism, as their information on infrastructure plans has been dubious and self-serving at best in the past (causing significant embarrassment to themselves and the regulator when they were called out for redacting out almost every page in an Environmental Assessment report on grounds of "commercial sensitivity". Of course, at the time, I couldn't resist the sarcasm: "Could you explain why the course of the River Ock is commercially sensitive? Should we inform Ordnance Survey to classify the maps?")
It does, though, imply that the "arms-length" aspect of privatisation has gone too far.
If you're in a seat that's been trending Conservative for several elections like Don Valley/Rother Valley/ Sedgefield, Bishop Auckland, the Stoke seats, you probably don't have much to worry about. These are all heading into the safe Conservative camp.
If you're in a seat that was just a fluke win, like Burnley, Leigh, you should be looking for another job.
If you're in a classic marginal, like Darlington, or High Peak, everything turns on the national state of play.
I like the clarity of the analysis though I don't fully agree. The trend may eventually secure your red wall seat by 2030, but losing Johnson / less Brexit agitation / energy bills could threaten any incumbent in particular. (There's a bigger conversation to have on PB about how long those trends will continue.)
I think the bigger issue in the first category of seats is that Labour, for a long time, punched above their socio-economic weight, because the memory of coal-mining was so strong. As the miners and ex-miners died off, thee seats moved rightwards at a rate of knots, as did (in earlier times) seats like Forest of Dean, NE Somerset, NW Leics. etc. Look at the swings to the Conservatives in these , since 1997, and they're in the high 20s, low 30s%.
And, mainly, the ex-mining seats are nice places to live. Housing is very affordable, relative to incomes, the cost of living is low, and the countryside is beautiful.
Okay, but here we hit directly into the parenthesised caveat. There has been a strong trend in a class of seats switching from industry to services, for over 20 years now. The trend is mostly anti-Labour. There were harbingers like LD winning Burnley and Redcar while losing a dozen or more seats in 2010. Ukip did well in those seats and then Johnson cleaned up. But at some point the trend will end, and to the extent it is about industry and mining memories, it should be ending pretty shortly in most places.
If you're in a seat that's been trending Conservative for several elections like Don Valley/Rother Valley/ Sedgefield, Bishop Auckland, the Stoke seats, you probably don't have much to worry about. These are all heading into the safe Conservative camp.
If you're in a seat that was just a fluke win, like Burnley, Leigh, you should be looking for another job.
If you're in a classic marginal, like Darlington, or High Peak, everything turns on the national state of play.
I like the clarity of the analysis though I don't fully agree. The trend may eventually secure your red wall seat by 2030, but losing Johnson / less Brexit agitation / energy bills could threaten any incumbent in particular. (There's a bigger conversation to have on PB about how long those trends will continue.)
I think the bigger issue in the first category of seats is that Labour, for a long time, punched above their socio-economic weight, because the memory of coal-mining was so strong. As the miners and ex-miners died off, thee seats moved rightwards at a rate of knots, as did (in earlier times) seats like Forest of Dean, NE Somerset, NW Leics. etc. Look at the swings to the Conservatives in these , since 1997, and they're in the high 20s, low 30s%.
And, mainly, the ex-mining seats are nice places to live. Housing is very affordable, relative to incomes, the cost of living is low, and the countryside is beautiful.
Countryside. The very nature of mine workings makes large areas of land unsuitable for building or farming. Plus you've got hills (slag heaps) and flashes where the workings have caved under rainfall to make lakes, on what was previously often a dull, flat landscape. Add 30 years to grow wild, and you've got some of the finest native habitats in England now.
There are a couple near us in W Yorkshire that are now RSPB nature reserves. Absolutely beautiful places. Housing nearby still cheap.
The reserve at St Aidan's is a bit more than a flash though! What a stupid disaster that was. The River Aire apparently flowed backwards for a while...
The reserve near to us in the Flatlands has had breeding Black-winged stilts this year, which was quite a coup. Probably weather related since they normally reside in southern Europe. Their Bitterns are a bit meh these days as they have colonised quite widely now across a number of ex-industrial sites (Dearne Valley etc).
The main change has been the cleaning up of the rivers, which has mostly happened because the government hasn't had to pay for it (at least, not directly). One aspect of privatisation that did work, although there is obviously more to do.
… snip … Soldiers will have been in theatre for months with no respite, and will be tired and demoralised. 40,000 of them won’t be going home. Give it another month and the weather will start to change, with more mud everywhere and winter fast approaching.
Maybe I’m being optimistic, but let’s hope my optimism pays off. Keep the weapons coming, Western governments.
Incredible. Not yet 6 months of special military operations and Russian k.i.a. approx two thirds the American losses in Vietnam over more than a dozen years.
Yes, it’s totally insane. Land wars are often horrific in terms of casualties, and this war has seen a lot of close-quarters fighting between the sides.
Not to mention the thousands of casualties among the defenders and Ukranian civilians.
Ukranian numbers for Russian casualties are:
Killed ~43.000 Wounded ~129.000 Prisoner of war ~1.000
That’s around 173,000 in total, nearly 20% of the entire Russian army. Now, some of the wounded might be okay and return at some point, but many of them will have suffered life-changing injuries. There’s plenty of evidence, that replacements from the Russian reserve forces are not well trained or equipped, and that battalions are having to merge together as their numbers dwindle.
Ukraine is thought to be losing 100 men per day on average, so close to 20,000 Ukranian soldiers so far.
I saw a suggestion (can't remember where) that due to the conscription/volunteers to defend their homeland across Ukraine that the Ukrainian army now has more people than the Russian one does. Most of them not military a few months ago, but they're gaining experience fast one imagines.
Is there any truth to that suggestion do you think? Russia is not adverse to throwing men at the meatgrinder and normally they outnumber any opponent, but if Ukrainians are willing to fight for their freedom then could numbers ultimately be a Ukrainian advantage unless Russia opts for full scale mobilisation and conscription?
Russia just doesn't have the numbers of young people to be reckless with their soldiers' lives any more. But, their generals don't appreciate that.
Meanwhile the prospect of genocide if they lose means Ukraine would not have much trouble mobilising a million people if they had to. This war’s only going one way. The real question is what happens next in Russia. Quite destabilising for the global security order if their armed forces more or less collapse. Much of their effective fighting units have already been expended, another 6 months of this and it might get desperate for their whole military.
De facto (especially if civil aviation becomes impossible to maintain in Russia) I'd expect Eastern Siberia to gradually become a province of China. I expect that Russia will only keep in being as a whole as a vassal state of China.
The Russians have already started cannibalising Boeing and Airbus planes, and even some of their own Sukhois, for which key parts like engines are not available domestically.
Here's the Ottolenghi bread-and-tomato-and-anchovies salad recipe. Remember to use URFA chili flakes, from the home of Gobekli Tepe. Use any other kind of chili flake and it will be disgusting
If you're in a seat that's been trending Conservative for several elections like Don Valley/Rother Valley/ Sedgefield, Bishop Auckland, the Stoke seats, you probably don't have much to worry about. These are all heading into the safe Conservative camp.
If you're in a seat that was just a fluke win, like Burnley, Leigh, you should be looking for another job.
If you're in a classic marginal, like Darlington, or High Peak, everything turns on the national state of play.
I like the clarity of the analysis though I don't fully agree. The trend may eventually secure your red wall seat by 2030, but losing Johnson / less Brexit agitation / energy bills could threaten any incumbent in particular. (There's a bigger conversation to have on PB about how long those trends will continue.)
I think the bigger issue in the first category of seats is that Labour, for a long time, punched above their socio-economic weight, because the memory of coal-mining was so strong. As the miners and ex-miners died off, thee seats moved rightwards at a rate of knots, as did (in earlier times) seats like Forest of Dean, NE Somerset, NW Leics. etc. Look at the swings to the Conservatives in these , since 1997, and they're in the high 20s, low 30s%.
And, mainly, the ex-mining seats are nice places to live. Housing is very affordable, relative to incomes, the cost of living is low, and the countryside is beautiful.
Countryside. The very nature of mine workings makes large areas of land unsuitable for building or farming. Plus you've got hills (slag heaps) and flashes where the workings have caved under rainfall to make lakes, on what was previously often a dull, flat landscape. Add 30 years to grow wild, and you've got some of the finest native habitats in England now.
There are a couple near us in W Yorkshire that are now RSPB nature reserves. Absolutely beautiful places. Housing nearby still cheap.
St Aidan's is a bit more than a flash though! What a stupid disaster that was. The River Aire apparently flowed backwards for a while...
The reserve near to us in the Flatlands has had breeding Black-winged stilts this year, which is quite a coup. Their Bitterns are a bit meh these days as they have colonised quite widely now.
Heh, just looked it up - I didn't know the history of its formation!. That was one of the two I was thinking of, the other being Fairburn Ings. You from around these parts, too?
If I was a redwaller I would be pretty bitter about those who brought Boris down. For all his multitude of faults I would recognise that he could reach parts of the electorate who won't give the likes of Truss the time of day and there just might have been a chance with him as leader at the next election. Truss, in fairness, recognises that concern and has very much played the loyalty card. Sunak, otoh, might, if I was a redwaller, look weak, self indulgent and unlikely to be much help.
So, going forward, that loyalty will give Truss the benefit of the doubt and initial support but it will be sanguine and realistic about what I can hope that she can do. My one hope would be that SKS is so boring and uninspirational that it is possible that a lot of my 2019 supporters might be reluctant to go back to a Labour party not offering much. And, like @NickPalmer, I would build up options on the side.
Johnson is a pathological liar. He's done it all his life. Totally unsuitable to be Prime Minister. Whether or not he could reach voters other politicians couldn't, no MP or candidate should want to canvass people with him as the leader.
Inspired by @BlancheLivermore I have just had a magnificent Salad Caprese
How can anything so cheap & simple be that good?
To be fair, I did go out and buy the absolute best ingredients along Parkway, from £2 a pop rare heritage tomatoes, to a £20 bottle of Lia Premium olive oil
to some ultra-fresh basil, the best buffalo mozzarella imaginable, a loaf of Borough Sourdough (toasted and rubbed with raw garlic), to grated kampot peppercorns and Ynys Mon sea salt, so my cheap easy delicious salad has just cost me about £40. And I ate it with two glasses of Edda Lei Bianco San Marzano wine so if I did this cheap easy lunch every day I'd be bankrupt in three months, but WTF it's sunny and hot
I've got a rather lovely bottle of Greek olive oil than my Mum bought me back from a recent holiday. I love the way the link calls it "extremely virgin"!
If you're in a seat that's been trending Conservative for several elections like Don Valley/Rother Valley/ Sedgefield, Bishop Auckland, the Stoke seats, you probably don't have much to worry about. These are all heading into the safe Conservative camp.
If you're in a seat that was just a fluke win, like Burnley, Leigh, you should be looking for another job.
If you're in a classic marginal, like Darlington, or High Peak, everything turns on the national state of play.
I like the clarity of the analysis though I don't fully agree. The trend may eventually secure your red wall seat by 2030, but losing Johnson / less Brexit agitation / energy bills could threaten any incumbent in particular. (There's a bigger conversation to have on PB about how long those trends will continue.)
I think the bigger issue in the first category of seats is that Labour, for a long time, punched above their socio-economic weight, because the memory of coal-mining was so strong. As the miners and ex-miners died off, thee seats moved rightwards at a rate of knots, as did (in earlier times) seats like Forest of Dean, NE Somerset, NW Leics. etc. Look at the swings to the Conservatives in these , since 1997, and they're in the high 20s, low 30s%.
And, mainly, the ex-mining seats are nice places to live. Housing is very affordable, relative to incomes, the cost of living is low, and the countryside is beautiful.
Countryside. The very nature of mine workings makes large areas of land unsuitable for building or farming. Plus you've got hills (slag heaps) and flashes where the workings have caved under rainfall to make lakes, on what was previously often a dull, flat landscape. Add 30 years to grow wild, and you've got some of the finest native habitats in England now.
There are a couple near us in W Yorkshire that are now RSPB nature reserves. Absolutely beautiful places. Housing nearby still cheap.
Was at the site of Europe's largest slag heap last week. A beautiful lake which takes about 40 minutes to walk around with plenty of birdlife and about a square mile of forest attached to it.
Sky reporting the drought in Europe is very serious with river levels threatening shipping and the Rhine may become impassable for ships carrying coal and petrol later this week
I was going to write 'it never rains but it pours', but I guess that's not an apt idiom at the moment.
Nevertheless, there seems to be a relentless torrent of bad news.
If I recall correctly Jim Callaghan appointed Dennis Howell as Minister for Drought in August 1976. Almost immediately it poured with rain. Problem sorted by a Labour government!
PB has managed similarly in the past. Predictions of draught and ruin by @SouthamObserver in particular have often brought on a deluge. But not, sadly, this year.
Inspired by @BlancheLivermore I have just had a magnificent Salad Caprese
How can anything so cheap & simple be that good?
To be fair, I did go out and buy the absolute best ingredients along Parkway, from £2 a pop rare heritage tomatoes, to a £20 bottle of Lia Premium olive oil
to some ultra-fresh basil, the best buffalo mozzarella imaginable, a loaf of Borough Sourdough (toasted and rubbed with raw garlic), to grated kampot peppercorns and Ynys Mon sea salt, so my cheap easy delicious salad has just cost me about £40. And I ate it with two glasses of Edda Lei Bianco San Marzano wine so if I did this cheap easy lunch every day I'd be bankrupt in three months, but WTF it's sunny and hot
I've got a rather lovely bottle of Greek olive oil than my Mum bought me back from a recent holiday. I love the way the link calls it "extremely virgin"!
I have a weird fetish for stupidly over-priced oil in really nice containers. I can't help buying them. I am a total sucker. I am sure in a blind taste test I wouldn't be able to differentiate them from standard Sainsbury's Own Brand Extra Virgin but fuck it, I just like opening my cupboard door and seeing them. Ranked up. The glowy yellow metal one from Corsica, the new porcelain job from Crete, the sober dark can from Sicily, the golden glassed one from Tuscany. I am now also the proud owner of some artisanal rapeseed oil from Hampshire in a magnificently serious dark green glass bottle, it stands there like an artwork
One person we need to see more of is Dale Vince. I suspect that between them, Dale Vince, Martin Lewis and Brown could cook up a more both socially and economically attuned response to the crisis than the Government ever could.
FPT. We're going to finish up with the energy providers de facto nationalised, aren't we? Just a question of how long it takes for all other options to be tried. May as well get on with it.
If you have a life essential where affordable supply, come what may, is far more important than choice, I think the case for some form of public ownership is strong.
Water? Not as if you can choose to be supplied by Severn Trent when Thames Water screw up, is it?
If I was a redwaller I would be pretty bitter about those who brought Boris down. For all his multitude of faults I would recognise that he could reach parts of the electorate who won't give the likes of Truss the time of day and there just might have been a chance with him as leader at the next election. Truss, in fairness, recognises that concern and has very much played the loyalty card. Sunak, otoh, might, if I was a redwaller, look weak, self indulgent and unlikely to be much help.
So, going forward, that loyalty will give Truss the benefit of the doubt and initial support but it will be sanguine and realistic about what I can hope that she can do. My one hope would be that SKS is so boring and uninspirational that it is possible that a lot of my 2019 supporters might be reluctant to go back to a Labour party not offering much. And, like @NickPalmer, I would build up options on the side.
Johnson is a pathological liar. He's done it all his life. Totally unsuitable to be Prime Minister. Whether or not he could reach voters other politicians couldn't, no MP or candidate should want to canvass people with him as the leader.
Redwall seats don't care who the PM is they want the golden future they were promised in 2019. And the problem is they are discovering that the future was cheaply gold plated and the plating is already wearing thin...
If you're in a seat that's been trending Conservative for several elections like Don Valley/Rother Valley/ Sedgefield, Bishop Auckland, the Stoke seats, you probably don't have much to worry about. These are all heading into the safe Conservative camp.
If you're in a seat that was just a fluke win, like Burnley, Leigh, you should be looking for another job.
If you're in a classic marginal, like Darlington, or High Peak, everything turns on the national state of play.
Leigh is an oddity. Leigh itself, what you'd think of as Leigh, couldn't be more stereotypical Labour if it tried. It should be Liverpool - Walton levels of safe red.
But the areas around Leigh have long had some nice homes that the well off could go to. A fair number of former professional footballers etc around there, not exactly slumming. But the volume of new homes in the area around Leigh now being thrown up fast wouldn't be amiss in any other pleasant town that's safe Tory.
Its not wall to wall terraced houses anymore, if the Tories can keep a hold of the Barratt Homes style vote then a lot of voters in Leigh are now Barratt Homes style and not run down terraces, even though the terraces are still there. . The demographics are evolving even in Leigh. It might be a marginal of the future.
I'm astonished at Leigh, which is well within Greater Manchester.
I'd never have produced any analysis which would have shown it going blue - just look at how it voted landslide Labour in 1997.
The new housing estates all around Leigh that exist now didn't exist in 1997 though. Or even more recently. Take a drive around the new estates of Leigh, and its not the Leigh that I knew.
"Greater Manchester" is itself a bit of a misnomer anyway, after all Sir Graham Brady's postbox is in Greater Manchester too. Greater Manchester is more of a political construct than a real thing, I've never met anyone from Leigh who'd identify as being a Mancunian. if you told anyone in Leigh that they're in Manchester aside from the politics they'd laugh at you. If you tell them they're from Wigan, then you better have a good dentist.
FPT. We're going to finish up with the energy providers de facto nationalised, aren't we? Just a question of how long it takes for all other options to be tried. May as well get on with it.
Though until the Ukraine and Russia war is over and sanctions ended that won't make much difference to inflation. It would also likely require a Labour government to implement
You really don't think that's where the new PM will end up (barring a swift end to the war of course)? All other options look implausible and risk mass collapse of providers. Of course, it won't be called nationalisation. But it won't differ much in all but name.
Given Truss is set to have arch free marketeer Kwarteng as her Chancellor and bring arch free marketeers like John Redwood into her Cabinet as I said it won't happen in a government led by her.
It might happen in a government led by Starmer after the next general election however
We know the ideological position she is sowing. The challenge will be what happens when the ideological rhetoric splats against reality and need.
"No handouts" and "tax cuts will deliver" work fine as slogans for ancient Tory giffers. But not in the real world. So they will have to act - the question is will it just be too little too late, or will they sneer at the people in trouble first?
Perhaps they can do direct support to the most needy and call it a tax cut?
Astonishingly, even though we clearly have an incompetent government and also that neither Liz nor Rishi offer any solutions to address ordinary people's concerns over CPI and fuel bills, there is still no real enthusiasm for Starmer or LAB. Mid term poll leads can be very soft.
… snip … Soldiers will have been in theatre for months with no respite, and will be tired and demoralised. 40,000 of them won’t be going home. Give it another month and the weather will start to change, with more mud everywhere and winter fast approaching.
Maybe I’m being optimistic, but let’s hope my optimism pays off. Keep the weapons coming, Western governments.
Incredible. Not yet 6 months of special military operations and Russian k.i.a. approx two thirds the American losses in Vietnam over more than a dozen years.
Yes, it’s totally insane. Land wars are often horrific in terms of casualties, and this war has seen a lot of close-quarters fighting between the sides.
Not to mention the thousands of casualties among the defenders and Ukranian civilians.
Ukranian numbers for Russian casualties are:
Killed ~43.000 Wounded ~129.000 Prisoner of war ~1.000
That’s around 173,000 in total, nearly 20% of the entire Russian army. Now, some of the wounded might be okay and return at some point, but many of them will have suffered life-changing injuries. There’s plenty of evidence, that replacements from the Russian reserve forces are not well trained or equipped, and that battalions are having to merge together as their numbers dwindle.
Ukraine is thought to be losing 100 men per day on average, so close to 20,000 Ukranian soldiers so far.
I saw a suggestion (can't remember where) that due to the conscription/volunteers to defend their homeland across Ukraine that the Ukrainian army now has more people than the Russian one does. Most of them not military a few months ago, but they're gaining experience fast one imagines.
Is there any truth to that suggestion do you think? Russia is not adverse to throwing men at the meatgrinder and normally they outnumber any opponent, but if Ukrainians are willing to fight for their freedom then could numbers ultimately be a Ukrainian advantage unless Russia opts for full scale mobilisation and conscription?
Russia just doesn't have the numbers of young people to be reckless with their soldiers' lives any more. But, their generals don't appreciate that.
Meanwhile the prospect of genocide if they lose means Ukraine would not have much trouble mobilising a million people if they had to. This war’s only going one way. The real question is what happens next in Russia. Quite destabilising for the global security order if their armed forces more or less collapse. Much of their effective fighting units have already been expended, another 6 months of this and it might get desperate for their whole military.
De facto (especially if civil aviation becomes impossible to maintain in Russia) I'd expect Eastern Siberia to gradually become a province of China. I expect that Russia will only keep in being as a whole as a vassal state of China.
The Russians have already started cannibalising Boeing and Airbus planes, and even some of their own Sukhois, for which key parts like engines are not available domestically.
If i were Xi Jinping, I’d be lining up Chinese troops for exercises on the Russian border - just to see Putin’s reaction.
There is no need - it's already defacto part of China and I think the chinese are very happy for it to be "managed" at a more local level as that allows dodgier deals to be done quietly.
FPT. We're going to finish up with the energy providers de facto nationalised, aren't we? Just a question of how long it takes for all other options to be tried. May as well get on with it.
If you have a life essential where affordable supply, come what may, is far more important than choice, I think the case for some form of public ownership is strong.
Water? Not as if you can choose to be supplied by Severn Trent when Thames Water screw up, is it?
… snip … Soldiers will have been in theatre for months with no respite, and will be tired and demoralised. 40,000 of them won’t be going home. Give it another month and the weather will start to change, with more mud everywhere and winter fast approaching.
Maybe I’m being optimistic, but let’s hope my optimism pays off. Keep the weapons coming, Western governments.
Incredible. Not yet 6 months of special military operations and Russian k.i.a. approx two thirds the American losses in Vietnam over more than a dozen years.
Yes, it’s totally insane. Land wars are often horrific in terms of casualties, and this war has seen a lot of close-quarters fighting between the sides.
Not to mention the thousands of casualties among the defenders and Ukranian civilians.
Ukranian numbers for Russian casualties are:
Killed ~43.000 Wounded ~129.000 Prisoner of war ~1.000
That’s around 173,000 in total, nearly 20% of the entire Russian army. Now, some of the wounded might be okay and return at some point, but many of them will have suffered life-changing injuries. There’s plenty of evidence, that replacements from the Russian reserve forces are not well trained or equipped, and that battalions are having to merge together as their numbers dwindle.
Ukraine is thought to be losing 100 men per day on average, so close to 20,000 Ukranian soldiers so far.
I saw a suggestion (can't remember where) that due to the conscription/volunteers to defend their homeland across Ukraine that the Ukrainian army now has more people than the Russian one does. Most of them not military a few months ago, but they're gaining experience fast one imagines.
Is there any truth to that suggestion do you think? Russia is not adverse to throwing men at the meatgrinder and normally they outnumber any opponent, but if Ukrainians are willing to fight for their freedom then could numbers ultimately be a Ukrainian advantage unless Russia opts for full scale mobilisation and conscription?
Russia just doesn't have the numbers of young people to be reckless with their soldiers' lives any more. But, their generals don't appreciate that.
Meanwhile the prospect of genocide if they lose means Ukraine would not have much trouble mobilising a million people if they had to. This war’s only going one way. The real question is what happens next in Russia. Quite destabilising for the global security order if their armed forces more or less collapse. Much of their effective fighting units have already been expended, another 6 months of this and it might get desperate for their whole military.
De facto (especially if civil aviation becomes impossible to maintain in Russia) I'd expect Eastern Siberia to gradually become a province of China. I expect that Russia will only keep in being as a whole as a vassal state of China.
The Russians have already started cannibalising Boeing and Airbus planes, and even some of their own Sukhois, for which key parts like engines are not available domestically.
If i were Xi Jinping, I’d be lining up Chinese troops for exercises on the Russian border - just to see Putin’s reaction.
Whilst I’ve also thought it would be funny if the Chinese massed troops for exercises near the Russia border in real terms it suits China to have Russia at war with Ukraine.
It weakens Russia in case China wants to do something later.
It creates a weak Russia who need to deal with China as a supplicant.
It’s a distraction to the rest of the world from whatever China is doing now.
It suits Xi ahead of selection by the party coming up to be able to point out its not time to change Chinese leadership with war on.
The longer the war goes on the more the Chinese can learn about different weapons systems they might have and Taiwan might have.
Ultimately they can put troops near border which would clearly end the Ukraine war as Russia would have to scramble east which again gives China the power of being the power broker to the world in the eyes of the “non-west” which is very useful long term.
But it would still be very funny to see Putin’s face of it happened.
If you're in a seat that's been trending Conservative for several elections like Don Valley/Rother Valley/ Sedgefield, Bishop Auckland, the Stoke seats, you probably don't have much to worry about. These are all heading into the safe Conservative camp.
If you're in a seat that was just a fluke win, like Burnley, Leigh, you should be looking for another job.
If you're in a classic marginal, like Darlington, or High Peak, everything turns on the national state of play.
I like the clarity of the analysis though I don't fully agree. The trend may eventually secure your red wall seat by 2030, but losing Johnson / less Brexit agitation / energy bills could threaten any incumbent in particular. (There's a bigger conversation to have on PB about how long those trends will continue.)
I think the bigger issue in the first category of seats is that Labour, for a long time, punched above their socio-economic weight, because the memory of coal-mining was so strong. As the miners and ex-miners died off, thee seats moved rightwards at a rate of knots, as did (in earlier times) seats like Forest of Dean, NE Somerset, NW Leics. etc. Look at the swings to the Conservatives in these , since 1997, and they're in the high 20s, low 30s%.
And, mainly, the ex-mining seats are nice places to live. Housing is very affordable, relative to incomes, the cost of living is low, and the countryside is beautiful.
Countryside. The very nature of mine workings makes large areas of land unsuitable for building or farming. Plus you've got hills (slag heaps) and flashes where the workings have caved under rainfall to make lakes, on what was previously often a dull, flat landscape. Add 30 years to grow wild, and you've got some of the finest native habitats in England now.
There are a couple near us in W Yorkshire that are now RSPB nature reserves. Absolutely beautiful places. Housing nearby still cheap.
St Aidan's is a bit more than a flash though! What a stupid disaster that was. The River Aire apparently flowed backwards for a while...
The reserve near to us in the Flatlands has had breeding Black-winged stilts this year, which is quite a coup. Their Bitterns are a bit meh these days as they have colonised quite widely now.
Heh, just looked it up - I didn't know the history of its formation!. That was one of the two I was thinking of, the other being Fairburn Ings. You from around these parts, too?
Yes. Apparently I now live in a city...
I'm familiar with a lot of the local sites, so I guessed which ones you meant. Fairburn has done well - Spoonbills!
Here's the Ottolenghi bread-and-tomato-and-anchovies salad recipe. Remember to use URFA chili flakes, from the home of Gobekli Tepe. Use any other kind of chili flake and it will be disgusting
Careful, you're heading perilously close to wokedom. Not just a recipe from the Guardian, but Ottolenghi - he's as woke as a very woke thing. I've always thought you were actually a closet wokester, though.
If you're in a seat that's been trending Conservative for several elections like Don Valley/Rother Valley/ Sedgefield, Bishop Auckland, the Stoke seats, you probably don't have much to worry about. These are all heading into the safe Conservative camp.
If you're in a seat that was just a fluke win, like Burnley, Leigh, you should be looking for another job.
If you're in a classic marginal, like Darlington, or High Peak, everything turns on the national state of play.
Leigh is an oddity. Leigh itself, what you'd think of as Leigh, couldn't be more stereotypical Labour if it tried. It should be Liverpool - Walton levels of safe red.
But the areas around Leigh have long had some nice homes that the well off could go to. A fair number of former professional footballers etc around there, not exactly slumming. But the volume of new homes in the area around Leigh now being thrown up fast wouldn't be amiss in any other pleasant town that's safe Tory.
Its not wall to wall terraced houses anymore, if the Tories can keep a hold of the Barratt Homes style vote then a lot of voters in Leigh are now Barratt Homes style and not run down terraces, even though the terraces are still there. . The demographics are evolving even in Leigh. It might be a marginal of the future.
I'm astonished at Leigh, which is well within Greater Manchester.
I'd never have produced any analysis which would have shown it going blue - just look at how it voted landslide Labour in 1997.
The new housing estates all around Leigh that exist now didn't exist in 1997 though. Or even more recently. Take a drive around the new estates of Leigh, and its not the Leigh that I knew.
"Greater Manchester" is itself a bit of a misnomer anyway, after all Sir Graham Brady's postbox is in Greater Manchester too. Greater Manchester is more of a political construct than a real thing, I've never met anyone from Leigh who'd identify as being a Mancunian. if you told anyone in Leigh that they're in Manchester aside from the politics they'd laugh at you. If you tell them they're from Wigan, then you better have a good dentist.
Leigh is like an island of a small town in a big conurbation. Suffers from really poor transport links compared to its neighbours.
If you're in a seat that's been trending Conservative for several elections like Don Valley/Rother Valley/ Sedgefield, Bishop Auckland, the Stoke seats, you probably don't have much to worry about. These are all heading into the safe Conservative camp.
If you're in a seat that was just a fluke win, like Burnley, Leigh, you should be looking for another job.
If you're in a classic marginal, like Darlington, or High Peak, everything turns on the national state of play.
Leigh is an oddity. Leigh itself, what you'd think of as Leigh, couldn't be more stereotypical Labour if it tried. It should be Liverpool - Walton levels of safe red.
But the areas around Leigh have long had some nice homes that the well off could go to. A fair number of former professional footballers etc around there, not exactly slumming. But the volume of new homes in the area around Leigh now being thrown up fast wouldn't be amiss in any other pleasant town that's safe Tory.
Its not wall to wall terraced houses anymore, if the Tories can keep a hold of the Barratt Homes style vote then a lot of voters in Leigh are now Barratt Homes style and not run down terraces, even though the terraces are still there. . The demographics are evolving even in Leigh. It might be a marginal of the future.
I'm astonished at Leigh, which is well within Greater Manchester.
I'd never have produced any analysis which would have shown it going blue - just look at how it voted landslide Labour in 1997.
The new housing estates all around Leigh that exist now didn't exist in 1997 though. Or even more recently. Take a drive around the new estates of Leigh, and its not the Leigh that I knew.
"Greater Manchester" is itself a bit of a misnomer anyway, after all Sir Graham Brady's postbox is in Greater Manchester too. Greater Manchester is more of a political construct than a real thing, I've never met anyone from Leigh who'd identify as being a Mancunian. if you told anyone in Leigh that they're in Manchester aside from the politics they'd laugh at you. If you tell them they're from Wigan, then you better have a good dentist.
Leigh is like an island of a small town in a big conurbation. Suffers from really poor transport links compared to its neighbours.
Its on the East Lancs Road and only a couple of minutes from the M6 and the M62 by the interchange. Not exactly cut off, is it?
If you're in a seat that's been trending Conservative for several elections like Don Valley/Rother Valley/ Sedgefield, Bishop Auckland, the Stoke seats, you probably don't have much to worry about. These are all heading into the safe Conservative camp.
If you're in a seat that was just a fluke win, like Burnley, Leigh, you should be looking for another job.
If you're in a classic marginal, like Darlington, or High Peak, everything turns on the national state of play.
Leigh is an oddity. Leigh itself, what you'd think of as Leigh, couldn't be more stereotypical Labour if it tried. It should be Liverpool - Walton levels of safe red.
But the areas around Leigh have long had some nice homes that the well off could go to. A fair number of former professional footballers etc around there, not exactly slumming. But the volume of new homes in the area around Leigh now being thrown up fast wouldn't be amiss in any other pleasant town that's safe Tory.
Its not wall to wall terraced houses anymore, if the Tories can keep a hold of the Barratt Homes style vote then a lot of voters in Leigh are now Barratt Homes style and not run down terraces, even though the terraces are still there. . The demographics are evolving even in Leigh. It might be a marginal of the future.
I'm astonished at Leigh, which is well within Greater Manchester.
I'd never have produced any analysis which would have shown it going blue - just look at how it voted landslide Labour in 1997.
The new housing estates all around Leigh that exist now didn't exist in 1997 though. Or even more recently. Take a drive around the new estates of Leigh, and its not the Leigh that I knew.
"Greater Manchester" is itself a bit of a misnomer anyway, after all Sir Graham Brady's postbox is in Greater Manchester too. Greater Manchester is more of a political construct than a real thing, I've never met anyone from Leigh who'd identify as being a Mancunian. if you told anyone in Leigh that they're in Manchester aside from the politics they'd laugh at you. If you tell them they're from Wigan, then you better have a good dentist.
If you have a good dentist then you already know you're not from Wigan.
FPT. We're going to finish up with the energy providers de facto nationalised, aren't we? Just a question of how long it takes for all other options to be tried. May as well get on with it.
Though until the Ukraine and Russia war is over and sanctions ended that won't make much difference to inflation. It would also likely require a Labour government to implement
You really don't think that's where the new PM will end up (barring a swift end to the war of course)? All other options look implausible and risk mass collapse of providers. Of course, it won't be called nationalisation. But it won't differ much in all but name.
Given Truss is set to have arch free marketeer Kwarteng as her Chancellor and bring arch free marketeers like John Redwood into her Cabinet as I said it won't happen in a government led by her.
It might happen in a government led by Starmer after the next general election however
Labour said this morning they are not looking at nationalising energy
How shit is Starmers Labour?! A genuine crisis and possibly essential need for a plank of Labour's historic position, nationalisation, and 'we arent looking at it'. They dont support strikes, they dont nationalise. What is the point of them?!
If you're in a seat that's been trending Conservative for several elections like Don Valley/Rother Valley/ Sedgefield, Bishop Auckland, the Stoke seats, you probably don't have much to worry about. These are all heading into the safe Conservative camp.
If you're in a seat that was just a fluke win, like Burnley, Leigh, you should be looking for another job.
If you're in a classic marginal, like Darlington, or High Peak, everything turns on the national state of play.
Leigh is an oddity. Leigh itself, what you'd think of as Leigh, couldn't be more stereotypical Labour if it tried. It should be Liverpool - Walton levels of safe red.
But the areas around Leigh have long had some nice homes that the well off could go to. A fair number of former professional footballers etc around there, not exactly slumming. But the volume of new homes in the area around Leigh now being thrown up fast wouldn't be amiss in any other pleasant town that's safe Tory.
Its not wall to wall terraced houses anymore, if the Tories can keep a hold of the Barratt Homes style vote then a lot of voters in Leigh are now Barratt Homes style and not run down terraces, even though the terraces are still there. . The demographics are evolving even in Leigh. It might be a marginal of the future.
I'm astonished at Leigh, which is well within Greater Manchester.
I'd never have produced any analysis which would have shown it going blue - just look at how it voted landslide Labour in 1997.
The new housing estates all around Leigh that exist now didn't exist in 1997 though. Or even more recently. Take a drive around the new estates of Leigh, and its not the Leigh that I knew.
"Greater Manchester" is itself a bit of a misnomer anyway, after all Sir Graham Brady's postbox is in Greater Manchester too. Greater Manchester is more of a political construct than a real thing, I've never met anyone from Leigh who'd identify as being a Mancunian. if you told anyone in Leigh that they're in Manchester aside from the politics they'd laugh at you. If you tell them they're from Wigan, then you better have a good dentist.
Leigh is like an island of a small town in a big conurbation. Suffers from really poor transport links compared to its neighbours.
Its on the East Lancs Road and only a couple of minutes from the M6 and the M62 by the interchange. Not exactly cut off, is it?
In comparison. It's neither on the motorway, nor on a mainline train route (nor any at all) like Wigan, Bolton, Warrington or Salford are. There is no reason to go to Leigh from any of these places. So it retains a little of the small town feel. But, yes, the outer villages are booming certainly. Town centre not so much.
Here's the Ottolenghi bread-and-tomato-and-anchovies salad recipe. Remember to use URFA chili flakes, from the home of Gobekli Tepe. Use any other kind of chili flake and it will be disgusting
Here's the Ottolenghi bread-and-tomato-and-anchovies salad recipe. Remember to use URFA chili flakes, from the home of Gobekli Tepe. Use any other kind of chili flake and it will be disgusting
Mint leaves 'roughly torn' To get the full benefit they should be roughly torn by a burly tradesman who carries a cache of reserved fennel fronds. What an absolute cock
If you're in a seat that's been trending Conservative for several elections like Don Valley/Rother Valley/ Sedgefield, Bishop Auckland, the Stoke seats, you probably don't have much to worry about. These are all heading into the safe Conservative camp.
If you're in a seat that was just a fluke win, like Burnley, Leigh, you should be looking for another job.
If you're in a classic marginal, like Darlington, or High Peak, everything turns on the national state of play.
Leigh is an oddity. Leigh itself, what you'd think of as Leigh, couldn't be more stereotypical Labour if it tried. It should be Liverpool - Walton levels of safe red.
But the areas around Leigh have long had some nice homes that the well off could go to. A fair number of former professional footballers etc around there, not exactly slumming. But the volume of new homes in the area around Leigh now being thrown up fast wouldn't be amiss in any other pleasant town that's safe Tory.
Its not wall to wall terraced houses anymore, if the Tories can keep a hold of the Barratt Homes style vote then a lot of voters in Leigh are now Barratt Homes style and not run down terraces, even though the terraces are still there. . The demographics are evolving even in Leigh. It might be a marginal of the future.
I'm astonished at Leigh, which is well within Greater Manchester.
I'd never have produced any analysis which would have shown it going blue - just look at how it voted landslide Labour in 1997.
The new housing estates all around Leigh that exist now didn't exist in 1997 though. Or even more recently. Take a drive around the new estates of Leigh, and its not the Leigh that I knew.
"Greater Manchester" is itself a bit of a misnomer anyway, after all Sir Graham Brady's postbox is in Greater Manchester too. Greater Manchester is more of a political construct than a real thing, I've never met anyone from Leigh who'd identify as being a Mancunian. if you told anyone in Leigh that they're in Manchester aside from the politics they'd laugh at you. If you tell them they're from Wigan, then you better have a good dentist.
In all reality, the ludicrous parochial northerner claim that virtually anyone would instinctively punch you in the face for daring to say they are from the next suburb of Greater Manchester is, of course, complete and utter mythology.
Not surprising given the $'s exchange rate with any other currency...
Yes, good point. It must feel ridiculously cheap to them
They all seem very happy, I must say
An old friend of mine is back from California with his younger wife. Now abiding in the Thames Valley. She has never been to the UK before and absolutely adores it. Everyone tries to tell her this weather is not normal, but she is adamant it's not just the weather. She loves it in England - lack of crime, no guns, healthcare, history, the usual
I do wonder if we are going to see a migration of Americans to London/UK if American turbulence continues
FPT. We're going to finish up with the energy providers de facto nationalised, aren't we? Just a question of how long it takes for all other options to be tried. May as well get on with it.
If you have a life essential where affordable supply, come what may, is far more important than choice, I think the case for some form of public ownership is strong.
Water? Not as if you can choose to be supplied by Severn Trent when Thames Water screw up, is it?
Is that the same Oxfordshire village that refused to allow a water reservoir to be built in their back yard?
Dim memory of the argument being about Abingdon area, from a friend living thereabouts - so I wouldn't have thought so (this is on the chalk downs, not the clay vale).
Just been out to water my tomatoes (they need doing three times a day at the moment). It's only three hours since I picked a load, and I could already pick the same number again. They're ripening so quickly..
I'm glad my folks are back from holiday tomorrow (in Sandbanks this time, so unlikely to bring back fancy olive oil!), and they can help me eat them
Starmer has even let Boris return from holiday and attend a meeting a day before he returns early and announces Labour will call for something to be done. Because it was as he was sunbathing he realised something MUST be done!
Just been out to water my tomatoes (they need doing three times a day at the moment). It's only three hours since I picked a load, and I could already pick the same number again. They're ripening so quickly..
I'm glad my folks are back from holiday tomorrow (in Sandbanks this time, so unlikely to bring back fancy olive oil!), and they can help me eat them
Render down to puree and freeze, for tomato soup and puttanesca all winter. (So long as there aren't too many power cuts.)
Here's the Ottolenghi bread-and-tomato-and-anchovies salad recipe. Remember to use URFA chili flakes, from the home of Gobekli Tepe. Use any other kind of chili flake and it will be disgusting
Mint leaves 'roughly torn' To get the full benefit they should be roughly torn by a burly tradesman who carries a cache of reserved fennel fronds. What an absolute cock
No, it's not cock. This stuff genuinely makes a difference. I've tried it and noticed it
eg the salad caprese I just had. In a restaurant the mozzarella will often (nearly always?) be carefully sliced and neatly arrayed, interleaved with tomatoes. But I did my research and Jamie Oliver (and others) say to tear it up in rough chunks. Why? Because it creates a blob of cheese with a much more interesting mouthfeel, plus you have way more actual cheese surface - because of the roughness - which can then soak up the oil, vinegar, salt, tomato juice, mmmmness
It is exactly the same principle the Italians use in creating different pasta shapes. For different sauces you want different pastas depending on how much sauce you want the pasta to soak up, and how you want it soaked. Generally, the crinklier the pasta the better: it will retain more sauce on each bite of pasta
So yes, "roughly torn" is probably right, and you are wrong in this instance. Sorry
Not surprising given the $'s exchange rate with any other currency...
Yes, good point. It must feel ridiculously cheap to them
They all seem very happy, I must say
An old friend of mine is back from California with his younger wife. Now abiding in the Thames Valley. She has never been to the UK before and absolutely adores it. Everyone tries to tell her this weather is not normal, but she is adamant it's not just the weather. She loves it in England - lack of crime, no guns, healthcare, history, the usual
I do wonder if we are going to see a migration of Americans to London/UK if American turbulence continues
It currently seems a race between US political collapse and British economic decline.
I know Americans eyeing the UK “if Trump wins again”, and Brits eyeing the US because the wage / tax / housing equation is generally more favourable (for the sort of people who might migrate).
If you're in a seat that's been trending Conservative for several elections like Don Valley/Rother Valley/ Sedgefield, Bishop Auckland, the Stoke seats, you probably don't have much to worry about. These are all heading into the safe Conservative camp.
If you're in a seat that was just a fluke win, like Burnley, Leigh, you should be looking for another job.
If you're in a classic marginal, like Darlington, or High Peak, everything turns on the national state of play.
I like the clarity of the analysis though I don't fully agree. The trend may eventually secure your red wall seat by 2030, but losing Johnson / less Brexit agitation / energy bills could threaten any incumbent in particular. (There's a bigger conversation to have on PB about how long those trends will continue.)
I think the bigger issue in the first category of seats is that Labour, for a long time, punched above their socio-economic weight, because the memory of coal-mining was so strong. As the miners and ex-miners died off, thee seats moved rightwards at a rate of knots, as did (in earlier times) seats like Forest of Dean, NE Somerset, NW Leics. etc. Look at the swings to the Conservatives in these , since 1997, and they're in the high 20s, low 30s%.
And, mainly, the ex-mining seats are nice places to live. Housing is very affordable, relative to incomes, the cost of living is low, and the countryside is beautiful.
Countryside. The very nature of mine workings makes large areas of land unsuitable for building or farming. Plus you've got hills (slag heaps) and flashes where the workings have caved under rainfall to make lakes, on what was previously often a dull, flat landscape. Add 30 years to grow wild, and you've got some of the finest native habitats in England now.
There are a couple near us in W Yorkshire that are now RSPB nature reserves. Absolutely beautiful places. Housing nearby still cheap.
St Aidan's is a bit more than a flash though! What a stupid disaster that was. The River Aire apparently flowed backwards for a while...
The reserve near to us in the Flatlands has had breeding Black-winged stilts this year, which is quite a coup. Their Bitterns are a bit meh these days as they have colonised quite widely now.
Heh, just looked it up - I didn't know the history of its formation!. That was one of the two I was thinking of, the other being Fairburn Ings. You from around these parts, too?
Yes. Apparently I now live in a city...
I'm familiar with a lot of the local sites, so I guessed which ones you meant. Fairburn has done well - Spoonbills!
Donny will always be a town to me, I think. "City" doesn't feel right at all.
Bridgend Central, Bridgend Council - L defending: C, L, LD, G, Ind Dodderhill, Wychavon Council - C defending: C, LD, G Laleham and Shepperton Green, Spelthorne Council - Ind (ex-C) defending: C, LD, TUSC
Here's the Ottolenghi bread-and-tomato-and-anchovies salad recipe. Remember to use URFA chili flakes, from the home of Gobekli Tepe. Use any other kind of chili flake and it will be disgusting
Mint leaves 'roughly torn' To get the full benefit they should be roughly torn by a burly tradesman who carries a cache of reserved fennel fronds. What an absolute cock
No, it's not cock. This stuff genuinely makes a difference. I've tried it and noticed it
eg the salad caprese I just had. In a restaurant the mozzarella will often (nearly always?) be carefully sliced and neatly arrayed, interleaved with tomatoes. But I did my research and Jamie Oliver (and others) say to tear it up in rough chunks. Why? Because it creates a blob of cheese with a much more interesting mouthfeel, plus you have way more actual cheese surface - because of the roughness - which can then soak up the oil, vinegar, salt, tomato juice, mmmmness
It is exactly the same principle the Italians use in creating different pasta shapes. For different sauces you want different pastas depending on how much sauce you want the pasta to soak up, and how you want it soaked. Generally, the crinklier the pasta the better: it will retain more sauce on each bite of pasta
So yes, "roughly torn" is probably right, and you are wrong in this instance. Sorry
This is absolutely correct, but there are some people who just won’t be told.
The belief some people have that pasta is interchangeable drives me crazy.
Here's the Ottolenghi bread-and-tomato-and-anchovies salad recipe. Remember to use URFA chili flakes, from the home of Gobekli Tepe. Use any other kind of chili flake and it will be disgusting
Mint leaves 'roughly torn' To get the full benefit they should be roughly torn by a burly tradesman who carries a cache of reserved fennel fronds. What an absolute cock
No, it's not cock. This stuff genuinely makes a difference. I've tried it and noticed it
eg the salad caprese I just had. In a restaurant the mozzarella will often (nearly always?) be carefully sliced and neatly arrayed, interleaved with tomatoes. But I did my research and Jamie Oliver (and others) say to tear it up in rough chunks. Why? Because it creates a blob of cheese with a much more interesting mouthfeel, plus you have way more actual cheese surface - because of the roughness - which can then soak up the oil, vinegar, salt, tomato juice, mmmmness
It is exactly the same principle the Italians use in creating different pasta shapes. For different sauces you want different pastas depending on how much sauce you want the pasta to soak up, and how you want it soaked. Generally, the crinklier the pasta the better: it will retain more sauce on each bite of pasta
So yes, "roughly torn" is probably right, and you are wrong in this instance. Sorry
I find it hard to believe I'm wrong. And you used the word mouthfeel. Go and roughly tear me some mint and think about what you did.
Not surprising given the $'s exchange rate with any other currency...
Yes, good point. It must feel ridiculously cheap to them
They all seem very happy, I must say
An old friend of mine is back from California with his younger wife. Now abiding in the Thames Valley. She has never been to the UK before and absolutely adores it. Everyone tries to tell her this weather is not normal, but she is adamant it's not just the weather. She loves it in England - lack of crime, no guns, healthcare, history, the usual
I do wonder if we are going to see a migration of Americans to London/UK if American turbulence continues
It currently seems a race between US political collapse and British economic decline.
I know Americans eyeing the UK “if Trump wins again”, and Brits eyeing the US because the wage / tax / housing equation is generally more favourable (for the sort of people who might migrate).
Right now I'd say there is no contest in quality of life between Europe and the USA. Europe wins on virtually every metric, despite the tax stuff
And if I was an American with the necessary money I would move. Nick Clegg is right. And if the English language and a big world city is important to you, it has to be London
However Europe might be engulfed in civil strife, widespread famine, and terrible Putin-esque wars in about 6 weeks, and America will seem like a dreamland, so I'm going to hold off on a definitive call
If you're in a seat that's been trending Conservative for several elections like Don Valley/Rother Valley/ Sedgefield, Bishop Auckland, the Stoke seats, you probably don't have much to worry about. These are all heading into the safe Conservative camp.
If you're in a seat that was just a fluke win, like Burnley, Leigh, you should be looking for another job.
If you're in a classic marginal, like Darlington, or High Peak, everything turns on the national state of play.
I like the clarity of the analysis though I don't fully agree. The trend may eventually secure your red wall seat by 2030, but losing Johnson / less Brexit agitation / energy bills could threaten any incumbent in particular. (There's a bigger conversation to have on PB about how long those trends will continue.)
I think the bigger issue in the first category of seats is that Labour, for a long time, punched above their socio-economic weight, because the memory of coal-mining was so strong. As the miners and ex-miners died off, thee seats moved rightwards at a rate of knots, as did (in earlier times) seats like Forest of Dean, NE Somerset, NW Leics. etc. Look at the swings to the Conservatives in these , since 1997, and they're in the high 20s, low 30s%.
And, mainly, the ex-mining seats are nice places to live. Housing is very affordable, relative to incomes, the cost of living is low, and the countryside is beautiful.
Countryside. The very nature of mine workings makes large areas of land unsuitable for building or farming. Plus you've got hills (slag heaps) and flashes where the workings have caved under rainfall to make lakes, on what was previously often a dull, flat landscape. Add 30 years to grow wild, and you've got some of the finest native habitats in England now.
There are a couple near us in W Yorkshire that are now RSPB nature reserves. Absolutely beautiful places. Housing nearby still cheap.
St Aidan's is a bit more than a flash though! What a stupid disaster that was. The River Aire apparently flowed backwards for a while...
The reserve near to us in the Flatlands has had breeding Black-winged stilts this year, which is quite a coup. Their Bitterns are a bit meh these days as they have colonised quite widely now.
Heh, just looked it up - I didn't know the history of its formation!. That was one of the two I was thinking of, the other being Fairburn Ings. You from around these parts, too?
Yes. Apparently I now live in a city...
I'm familiar with a lot of the local sites, so I guessed which ones you meant. Fairburn has done well - Spoonbills!
Donny will always be a town to me, I think. "City" doesn't feel right at all.
At least the FC is 'Rovers', so no need to change. My childhood town always had 'City' as the FC, I was in my twenties before the town actually became a city.
Here's the Ottolenghi bread-and-tomato-and-anchovies salad recipe. Remember to use URFA chili flakes, from the home of Gobekli Tepe. Use any other kind of chili flake and it will be disgusting
Mint leaves 'roughly torn' To get the full benefit they should be roughly torn by a burly tradesman who carries a cache of reserved fennel fronds. What an absolute cock
No, it's not cock. This stuff genuinely makes a difference. I've tried it and noticed it
eg the salad caprese I just had. In a restaurant the mozzarella will often (nearly always?) be carefully sliced and neatly arrayed, interleaved with tomatoes. But I did my research and Jamie Oliver (and others) say to tear it up in rough chunks. Why? Because it creates a blob of cheese with a much more interesting mouthfeel, plus you have way more actual cheese surface - because of the roughness - which can then soak up the oil, vinegar, salt, tomato juice, mmmmness
It is exactly the same principle the Italians use in creating different pasta shapes. For different sauces you want different pastas depending on how much sauce you want the pasta to soak up, and how you want it soaked. Generally, the crinklier the pasta the better: it will retain more sauce on each bite of pasta
So yes, "roughly torn" is probably right, and you are wrong in this instance. Sorry
This is absolutely correct, but there are some people who just won’t be told.
The belief some people have that pasta is interchangeable drives me crazy.
Yes, totally!
"Pasta is pasta"
OMG no it isn't. Fusilli is completely different to spaghetti which is totally different to farfalle. Italians have been doing this for CENTURIES and they are not stupid bad cooks
It's like saying chips are like crisps (or vice versa if you are American)
Not surprising given the $'s exchange rate with any other currency...
Yes, good point. It must feel ridiculously cheap to them
They all seem very happy, I must say
An old friend of mine is back from California with his younger wife. Now abiding in the Thames Valley. She has never been to the UK before and absolutely adores it. Everyone tries to tell her this weather is not normal, but she is adamant it's not just the weather. She loves it in England - lack of crime, no guns, healthcare, history, the usual
I do wonder if we are going to see a migration of Americans to London/UK if American turbulence continues
It currently seems a race between US political collapse and British economic decline.
I know Americans eyeing the UK “if Trump wins again”, and Brits eyeing the US because the wage / tax / housing equation is generally more favourable (for the sort of people who might migrate).
Right now I'd say there is no contest in quality of life between Europe and the USA. Europe wins on virtually every metric, despite the tax stuff
And if I was an American with the necessary money I would move. Nick Clegg is right. And if the English language and a big world city is important to you, it has to be London
However Europe might be engulfed in civil strife, widespread famine, and terrible Putin-esque wars in about 6 weeks, and America will seem like a dreamland, so I'm going to hold off on a definitive call
My now-expert opinion is that London beats New York on most lifestyle metrics, except that as soon as you get outside of the densest parts of New York you have access to vast and wonderful landscape where commutable and LARGE property is very cheap by British standards.
Here's the Ottolenghi bread-and-tomato-and-anchovies salad recipe. Remember to use URFA chili flakes, from the home of Gobekli Tepe. Use any other kind of chili flake and it will be disgusting
Mint leaves 'roughly torn' To get the full benefit they should be roughly torn by a burly tradesman who carries a cache of reserved fennel fronds. What an absolute cock
No, it's not cock. This stuff genuinely makes a difference. I've tried it and noticed it
eg the salad caprese I just had. In a restaurant the mozzarella will often (nearly always?) be carefully sliced and neatly arrayed, interleaved with tomatoes. But I did my research and Jamie Oliver (and others) say to tear it up in rough chunks. Why? Because it creates a blob of cheese with a much more interesting mouthfeel, plus you have way more actual cheese surface - because of the roughness - which can then soak up the oil, vinegar, salt, tomato juice, mmmmness
It is exactly the same principle the Italians use in creating different pasta shapes. For different sauces you want different pastas depending on how much sauce you want the pasta to soak up, and how you want it soaked. Generally, the crinklier the pasta the better: it will retain more sauce on each bite of pasta
So yes, "roughly torn" is probably right, and you are wrong in this instance. Sorry
This is absolutely correct, but there are some people who just won’t be told.
The belief some people have that pasta is interchangeable drives me crazy.
Yes, totally!
"Pasta is pasta"
OMG no it isn't. Fusilli is completely different to spaghetti which is totally different to farfalle. Italians have been doing this for CENTURIES and they are not stupid bad cooks
It's like saying chips are like crisps (or vice versa if you are American)
Not surprising given the $'s exchange rate with any other currency...
Yes, good point. It must feel ridiculously cheap to them
They all seem very happy, I must say
An old friend of mine is back from California with his younger wife. Now abiding in the Thames Valley. She has never been to the UK before and absolutely adores it. Everyone tries to tell her this weather is not normal, but she is adamant it's not just the weather. She loves it in England - lack of crime, no guns, healthcare, history, the usual
I do wonder if we are going to see a migration of Americans to London/UK if American turbulence continues
It currently seems a race between US political collapse and British economic decline.
I know Americans eyeing the UK “if Trump wins again”, and Brits eyeing the US because the wage / tax / housing equation is generally more favourable (for the sort of people who might migrate).
Right now I'd say there is no contest in quality of life between Europe and the USA. Europe wins on virtually every metric, despite the tax stuff
And if I was an American with the necessary money I would move. Nick Clegg is right. And if the English language and a big world city is important to you, it has to be London
However Europe might be engulfed in civil strife, widespread famine, and terrible Putin-esque wars in about 6 weeks, and America will seem like a dreamland, so I'm going to hold off on a definitive call
My now-expert opinion is that London beats New York on most lifestyle metrics, except that as soon as you get outside of the densest parts of New York you have access to vast and wonderful landscape where commutable and LARGE property is very cheap by British standards.
Housing costs consume so much of British incomes.
My own view is that for people on median incomes, life is definitely better in the USA than it is here. But, for the poor, it's worse.
FPT. We're going to finish up with the energy providers de facto nationalised, aren't we? Just a question of how long it takes for all other options to be tried. May as well get on with it.
Though until the Ukraine and Russia war is over and sanctions ended that won't make much difference to inflation. It would also likely require a Labour government to implement
You really don't think that's where the new PM will end up (barring a swift end to the war of course)? All other options look implausible and risk mass collapse of providers. Of course, it won't be called nationalisation. But it won't differ much in all but name.
Given Truss is set to have arch free marketeer Kwarteng as her Chancellor and bring arch free marketeers like John Redwood into her Cabinet as I said it won't happen in a government led by her. Truss will lead a more Thatcherite government economically than that of Johnson and Sunak.
It might happen in a government led by Starmer after the next general election however.
Perhaps Liz Truss is having second thoughts about the numpties who landed her with indefensible policies that she has to ditch by the weekend.
Not surprising given the $'s exchange rate with any other currency...
Yes, good point. It must feel ridiculously cheap to them
They all seem very happy, I must say
An old friend of mine is back from California with his younger wife. Now abiding in the Thames Valley. She has never been to the UK before and absolutely adores it. Everyone tries to tell her this weather is not normal, but she is adamant it's not just the weather. She loves it in England - lack of crime, no guns, healthcare, history, the usual
I do wonder if we are going to see a migration of Americans to London/UK if American turbulence continues
Rich liberal Amerians to London and the Home Counties or Edinburgh maybe, Stoke, Burnley and Merthyr Tydfil probably not.
Here's the Ottolenghi bread-and-tomato-and-anchovies salad recipe. Remember to use URFA chili flakes, from the home of Gobekli Tepe. Use any other kind of chili flake and it will be disgusting
Mint leaves 'roughly torn' To get the full benefit they should be roughly torn by a burly tradesman who carries a cache of reserved fennel fronds. What an absolute cock
No, it's not cock. This stuff genuinely makes a difference. I've tried it and noticed it
eg the salad caprese I just had. In a restaurant the mozzarella will often (nearly always?) be carefully sliced and neatly arrayed, interleaved with tomatoes. But I did my research and Jamie Oliver (and others) say to tear it up in rough chunks. Why? Because it creates a blob of cheese with a much more interesting mouthfeel, plus you have way more actual cheese surface - because of the roughness - which can then soak up the oil, vinegar, salt, tomato juice, mmmmness
It is exactly the same principle the Italians use in creating different pasta shapes. For different sauces you want different pastas depending on how much sauce you want the pasta to soak up, and how you want it soaked. Generally, the crinklier the pasta the better: it will retain more sauce on each bite of pasta
So yes, "roughly torn" is probably right, and you are wrong in this instance. Sorry
This is absolutely correct, but there are some people who just won’t be told.
The belief some people have that pasta is interchangeable drives me crazy.
Yes, totally!
"Pasta is pasta"
OMG no it isn't. Fusilli is completely different to spaghetti which is totally different to farfalle. Italians have been doing this for CENTURIES and they are not stupid bad cooks
It's like saying chips are like crisps (or vice versa if you are American)
Make me an alphabetti spaghetti sandwich (on a white warburtons sandwich loaf) and we can talk about them funny bow tie pastas you get in London restaurants
Not surprising given the $'s exchange rate with any other currency...
Yes, good point. It must feel ridiculously cheap to them
They all seem very happy, I must say
An old friend of mine is back from California with his younger wife. Now abiding in the Thames Valley. She has never been to the UK before and absolutely adores it. Everyone tries to tell her this weather is not normal, but she is adamant it's not just the weather. She loves it in England - lack of crime, no guns, healthcare, history, the usual
I do wonder if we are going to see a migration of Americans to London/UK if American turbulence continues
It currently seems a race between US political collapse and British economic decline.
I know Americans eyeing the UK “if Trump wins again”, and Brits eyeing the US because the wage / tax / housing equation is generally more favourable (for the sort of people who might migrate).
Right now I'd say there is no contest in quality of life between Europe and the USA. Europe wins on virtually every metric, despite the tax stuff
And if I was an American with the necessary money I would move. Nick Clegg is right. And if the English language and a big world city is important to you, it has to be London
However Europe might be engulfed in civil strife, widespread famine, and terrible Putin-esque wars in about 6 weeks, and America will seem like a dreamland, so I'm going to hold off on a definitive call
My now-expert opinion is that London beats New York on most lifestyle metrics, except that as soon as you get outside of the densest parts of New York you have access to vast and wonderful landscape where commutable and LARGE property is very cheap by British standards.
Housing costs consume so much of British incomes.
Yes, absolutely: American landscapes are properly majestic, and unspoiled, and land will always be cheaper for large houses (the two facts are linked, of course). Housing costs are particularly cruel in shoe-box southern England
On the other hand I can be in Paris in two hours, city centre to city centre, or indeed anywhere in western Europe by a plane, Venice to Rome, Barcelona to Biarritz, Stockholm to Sardinia. The European equivalent of America's accessible natural landscapes is varied and incredible human civilisation, all around
Plus, European natural landscapes are not entirely boring
If you're in a seat that's been trending Conservative for several elections like Don Valley/Rother Valley/ Sedgefield, Bishop Auckland, the Stoke seats, you probably don't have much to worry about. These are all heading into the safe Conservative camp.
If you're in a seat that was just a fluke win, like Burnley, Leigh, you should be looking for another job.
If you're in a classic marginal, like Darlington, or High Peak, everything turns on the national state of play.
I like the clarity of the analysis though I don't fully agree. The trend may eventually secure your red wall seat by 2030, but losing Johnson / less Brexit agitation / energy bills could threaten any incumbent in particular. (There's a bigger conversation to have on PB about how long those trends will continue.)
I think the bigger issue in the first category of seats is that Labour, for a long time, punched above their socio-economic weight, because the memory of coal-mining was so strong. As the miners and ex-miners died off, thee seats moved rightwards at a rate of knots, as did (in earlier times) seats like Forest of Dean, NE Somerset, NW Leics. etc. Look at the swings to the Conservatives in these , since 1997, and they're in the high 20s, low 30s%.
And, mainly, the ex-mining seats are nice places to live. Housing is very affordable, relative to incomes, the cost of living is low, and the countryside is beautiful.
Countryside. The very nature of mine workings makes large areas of land unsuitable for building or farming. Plus you've got hills (slag heaps) and flashes where the workings have caved under rainfall to make lakes, on what was previously often a dull, flat landscape. Add 30 years to grow wild, and you've got some of the finest native habitats in England now.
There are a couple near us in W Yorkshire that are now RSPB nature reserves. Absolutely beautiful places. Housing nearby still cheap.
St Aidan's is a bit more than a flash though! What a stupid disaster that was. The River Aire apparently flowed backwards for a while...
The reserve near to us in the Flatlands has had breeding Black-winged stilts this year, which is quite a coup. Their Bitterns are a bit meh these days as they have colonised quite widely now.
Heh, just looked it up - I didn't know the history of its formation!. That was one of the two I was thinking of, the other being Fairburn Ings. You from around these parts, too?
Yes. Apparently I now live in a city...
I'm familiar with a lot of the local sites, so I guessed which ones you meant. Fairburn has done well - Spoonbills!
You two are near me. My Dad lives in Fairburn.
I only found out about how St Aidan's was formed recently. I was 10 when it happened but I can't remember hearing anything at all about it. Mind you, we got Tyne Tees region tele because, apparently, the cooling towers at Ferrybridge C blocked the Yorkshire TV region signal from my house and quite a few surrounding. I always feel slightly remote from the rest of Yorkshire cos I grew up watching local news that told me about happenings in Peterlee and Gateshead. Same with BBC.
It's a great time to be an American tourist. Any American who is able should be taking full advantage of the strength of the dollar.
And in geopolitical terms, it's been a while since America was this popular in Europe I would guess, but war with Russia would have that sort of effect.
Not surprising given the $'s exchange rate with any other currency...
Yes, good point. It must feel ridiculously cheap to them
They all seem very happy, I must say
An old friend of mine is back from California with his younger wife. Now abiding in the Thames Valley. She has never been to the UK before and absolutely adores it. Everyone tries to tell her this weather is not normal, but she is adamant it's not just the weather. She loves it in England - lack of crime, no guns, healthcare, history, the usual
I do wonder if we are going to see a migration of Americans to London/UK if American turbulence continues
It currently seems a race between US political collapse and British economic decline.
I know Americans eyeing the UK “if Trump wins again”, and Brits eyeing the US because the wage / tax / housing equation is generally more favourable (for the sort of people who might migrate).
Right now I'd say there is no contest in quality of life between Europe and the USA. Europe wins on virtually every metric, despite the tax stuff
And if I was an American with the necessary money I would move. Nick Clegg is right. And if the English language and a big world city is important to you, it has to be London
However Europe might be engulfed in civil strife, widespread famine, and terrible Putin-esque wars in about 6 weeks, and America will seem like a dreamland, so I'm going to hold off on a definitive call
My now-expert opinion is that London beats New York on most lifestyle metrics, except that as soon as you get outside of the densest parts of New York you have access to vast and wonderful landscape where commutable and LARGE property is very cheap by British standards.
Housing costs consume so much of British incomes.
My own view is that for people on median incomes, life is definitely better in the USA than it is here. But, for the poor, it's worse.
That used to be true, now it is not true. To my mind
The average American life is now notably worse than the average European life, in multiple ways. For the top 10% in the USA life is still absolutely fabulous, but that is the case in most parts of the world
Food, education, urban parks*, public transport, culture, pubs etc are all better in London. Plus you have proximity to Europe.
New York is better for can-do attitude, salaries, taxation, hours of sunlight, and very easy proximity to the great outdoors. Plus, as I said above suburban (or perhaps exurban) housing is astonishingly cheap.
Healthcare is a wash, depending on your circumstances.
*Except Central Park, which has no peer in London.
Not surprising given the $'s exchange rate with any other currency...
Yes, good point. It must feel ridiculously cheap to them
They all seem very happy, I must say
An old friend of mine is back from California with his younger wife. Now abiding in the Thames Valley. She has never been to the UK before and absolutely adores it. Everyone tries to tell her this weather is not normal, but she is adamant it's not just the weather. She loves it in England - lack of crime, no guns, healthcare, history, the usual
I do wonder if we are going to see a migration of Americans to London/UK if American turbulence continues
Rich liberal Amerians to London and the Home Counties or Edinburgh maybe, Stoke, Burnley and Merthyr Tydfil probably not.
That's not a very meaningful comment as not so many people live in Merthyr Tudful etc as in London and the HC.
Here's the Ottolenghi bread-and-tomato-and-anchovies salad recipe. Remember to use URFA chili flakes, from the home of Gobekli Tepe. Use any other kind of chili flake and it will be disgusting
Mint leaves 'roughly torn' To get the full benefit they should be roughly torn by a burly tradesman who carries a cache of reserved fennel fronds. What an absolute cock
No, it's not cock. This stuff genuinely makes a difference. I've tried it and noticed it
eg the salad caprese I just had. In a restaurant the mozzarella will often (nearly always?) be carefully sliced and neatly arrayed, interleaved with tomatoes. But I did my research and Jamie Oliver (and others) say to tear it up in rough chunks. Why? Because it creates a blob of cheese with a much more interesting mouthfeel, plus you have way more actual cheese surface - because of the roughness - which can then soak up the oil, vinegar, salt, tomato juice, mmmmness
It is exactly the same principle the Italians use in creating different pasta shapes. For different sauces you want different pastas depending on how much sauce you want the pasta to soak up, and how you want it soaked. GenGoerally, the crinklier the pasta the better: it will retain more sauce on each bite of pasta
So yes, "roughly torn" is probably right, and you are wrong in this instance. Sorry
This is absolutely correct, but there are some people who just won’t be told.
The belief some people have that pasta is interchangeable drives me crazy.
Yes, totally!
"Pasta is pasta"
OMG no it isn't. Fusilli is completely different to spaghetti which is totally different to farfalle. Italians have been doing this for CENTURIES and they are not stupid bad cooks
It's like saying chips are like crisps (or vice versa if you are American)
Keir was daft to make such a belt-and-braces promise to the membership. It reads like something from Michael Foot.
He is also daft to junk it, seemingly wholesale, when elements have never seemed more appropriate.
I wonder if there's some model of public ownership other than the typical nationalisation that he might go for. That way Labour can say they're not going to nationalise but will be able to claim they've kept their promise for some kind of public ownership. Maybe Government shareholders or something like that.
FPT. We're going to finish up with the energy providers de facto nationalised, aren't we? Just a question of how long it takes for all other options to be tried. May as well get on with it.
If you have a life essential where affordable supply, come what may, is far more important than choice, I think the case for some form of public ownership is strong.
Water? Not as if you can choose to be supplied by Severn Trent when Thames Water screw up, is it?
Is that the same Oxfordshire village that refused to allow a water reservoir to be built in their back yard?
Dim memory of the argument being about Abingdon area, from a friend living thereabouts - so I wouldn't have thought so (this is on the chalk downs, not the clay vale).
Nowhere near.
Apparently there have been "technical problems" at the small reservoir nearby to it. It's possible that it's dried out, but two factors make that raise more questions than answers: Farmoor reservoir (the largest one currently in Oxfordshire; a different reservoir) is at nearly 90% of capacity, and reservoirs shouldn't run down beyond about 20% due to algae blooms. Makes me wonder if some sort of plug was accidentally pulled.
Moreover, only half the village is out of water. Somehow, TW is only supplying that half of the village from that small reservoir; everywhere else is properly linked up (the village has had long-running problems).
Beyond that, we're getting into the argument about SESRO (reservoir) versus STT (Severn-Thames Transfer linking all the way to United Utilities).
SESRO: 15 yrs at least to build (assuming a megaproject like this comes in on schedule - this is a scale beyond any bunded reservoir ever attempted in the UK) plus at least two years to fill from the Thames (assuming the Thames has plentiful water for both years). Totally dependent on the Thames (so suceptible to single-region droughts), max water output of 290 Ml/day, numbers don't close to fulfil the criterion of avoiding rare droughts. Huge environmental impacts (it's a bad place to build a reservoir; the only justification is that many other places in the Thames Valley are even worse). On a floodplain, so would screw up towns and villages nearby in flood season. Would cause regular fogs over the A34. Unknown what the effects of flexing 150,000,000 tonnes on and off the clay floor of the Vale would be.
STT: 2-3 yrs to build (known and familiar technology). Immediately available once built. 300-500 Ml/day water output. Resilient to even two-region droughts, let alone a single-region drought. No disruption or environmental issues.
Thames Water don't want STT to come first, or even at all. Original plans were "we'll consider STT after 2080." With the 290Ml/day from SESRO, they say they may well not need it at all.
They've been forced to bring it forward to the 2050s. We want them to build STT first (far quicker, half the price, no disruption or environmental impact, drought resilience way beyond what is needed), and then see if a reservoir is needed afterwards. And, if so, where would be best for it with the greater reach.
Drawbacks to STT from Thames Water's point of view: not a valuable commercial asset, does not provide water they own and can sell on to Affinity Water and Southern Water. And if STT is built, they'll probably never get SESRO.
Not surprising given the $'s exchange rate with any other currency...
Yes, good point. It must feel ridiculously cheap to them
They all seem very happy, I must say
An old friend of mine is back from California with his younger wife. Now abiding in the Thames Valley. She has never been to the UK before and absolutely adores it. Everyone tries to tell her this weather is not normal, but she is adamant it's not just the weather. She loves it in England - lack of crime, no guns, healthcare, history, the usual
I do wonder if we are going to see a migration of Americans to London/UK if American turbulence continues
Rich liberal Amerians to London and the Home Counties or Edinburgh maybe, Stoke, Burnley and Merthyr Tydfil probably not.
That's not a very meaningful comment as not so many people live in Merthyr Tudful etc as in London and the HC.
The same applies for most of Wales, the Midlands and North compared to London and the HC.
Same as few Brits ever move to the US Midwest or South (outside Florida) just mainly to New York, the North East and West Coast
Keir was daft to make such a belt-and-braces promise to the membership. It reads like something from Michael Foot.
He is also daft to junk it, seemingly wholesale, when elements have never seemed more appropriate.
I wonder if there's some model of public ownership other than the typical nationalisation that he might go for. That way Labour can say they're not going to nationalise but will be able to claim they've kept their promise for some kind of public ownership. Maybe Government shareholders or something like that.
Thats generally how it's done in other countries (and often here).
Food, education, urban parks*, public transport, culture, pubs etc are all better in London. Plus you have proximity to Europe.
New York is better for can-do attitude, salaries, taxation, hours of sunlight, and very easy proximity to the great outdoors. Plus, as I said above suburban (or perhaps exurban) housing is astonishingly cheap.
Healthcare is a wash, depending on your circumstances.
*Except Central Park, which has no peer in London.
New York is a lot colder and a lot hotter for a lot of the year though. I prefer the climate in london apart from spring and autumn when NY is much nicer.
Not surprising given the $'s exchange rate with any other currency...
Yes, good point. It must feel ridiculously cheap to them
They all seem very happy, I must say
An old friend of mine is back from California with his younger wife. Now abiding in the Thames Valley. She has never been to the UK before and absolutely adores it. Everyone tries to tell her this weather is not normal, but she is adamant it's not just the weather. She loves it in England - lack of crime, no guns, healthcare, history, the usual
I do wonder if we are going to see a migration of Americans to London/UK if American turbulence continues
It currently seems a race between US political collapse and British economic decline.
I know Americans eyeing the UK “if Trump wins again”, and Brits eyeing the US because the wage / tax / housing equation is generally more favourable (for the sort of people who might migrate).
Right now I'd say there is no contest in quality of life between Europe and the USA. Europe wins on virtually every metric, despite the tax stuff
And if I was an American with the necessary money I would move. Nick Clegg is right. And if the English language and a big world city is important to you, it has to be London
However Europe might be engulfed in civil strife, widespread famine, and terrible Putin-esque wars in about 6 weeks, and America will seem like a dreamland, so I'm going to hold off on a definitive call
My now-expert opinion is that London beats New York on most lifestyle metrics, except that as soon as you get outside of the densest parts of New York you have access to vast and wonderful landscape where commutable and LARGE property is very cheap by British standards.
Housing costs consume so much of British incomes.
My own view is that for people on median incomes, life is definitely better in the USA than it is here. But, for the poor, it's worse.
That used to be true, now it is not true. To my mind
The average American life is now notably worse than the average European life, in multiple ways. For the top 10% in the USA life is still absolutely fabulous, but that is the case in most parts of the world
I don’t agree with this. It’s certainly true for the bottom 30% or 40%.
It then gets progressively less true, depending precisely where in the US.
Looking at key metros, SF, LA and NYC are in certain respects quite dysfunctional such that unless you are in the top 10% or 5% you might be better off in Europe.
What is undeniably true is that there are vast swathes of Americans living in big houses with big cars, far away from poor people with all their problems, living incredibly comfortably.
Keir was daft to make such a belt-and-braces promise to the membership. It reads like something from Michael Foot.
He is also daft to junk it, seemingly wholesale, when elements have never seemed more appropriate.
I wonder if there's some model of public ownership other than the typical nationalisation that he might go for. That way Labour can say they're not going to nationalise but will be able to claim they've kept their promise for some kind of public ownership. Maybe Government shareholders or something like that.
Contrary to what's often discussed or assumed on PB and elsewhere, Corbyn and McDonnell were in fact heading somewhere similar, possibly combined with a decentralised, mutualised-type option.
If you're in a seat that's been trending Conservative for several elections like Don Valley/Rother Valley/ Sedgefield, Bishop Auckland, the Stoke seats, you probably don't have much to worry about. These are all heading into the safe Conservative camp.
If you're in a seat that was just a fluke win, like Burnley, Leigh, you should be looking for another job.
If you're in a classic marginal, like Darlington, or High Peak, everything turns on the national state of play.
I like the clarity of the analysis though I don't fully agree. The trend may eventually secure your red wall seat by 2030, but losing Johnson / less Brexit agitation / energy bills could threaten any incumbent in particular. (There's a bigger conversation to have on PB about how long those trends will continue.)
I think the bigger issue in the first category of seats is that Labour, for a long time, punched above their socio-economic weight, because the memory of coal-mining was so strong. As the miners and ex-miners died off, thee seats moved rightwards at a rate of knots, as did (in earlier times) seats like Forest of Dean, NE Somerset, NW Leics. etc. Look at the swings to the Conservatives in these , since 1997, and they're in the high 20s, low 30s%.
And, mainly, the ex-mining seats are nice places to live. Housing is very affordable, relative to incomes, the cost of living is low, and the countryside is beautiful.
Countryside. The very nature of mine workings makes large areas of land unsuitable for building or farming. Plus you've got hills (slag heaps) and flashes where the workings have caved under rainfall to make lakes, on what was previously often a dull, flat landscape. Add 30 years to grow wild, and you've got some of the finest native habitats in England now.
There are a couple near us in W Yorkshire that are now RSPB nature reserves. Absolutely beautiful places. Housing nearby still cheap.
St Aidan's is a bit more than a flash though! What a stupid disaster that was. The River Aire apparently flowed backwards for a while...
The reserve near to us in the Flatlands has had breeding Black-winged stilts this year, which is quite a coup. Their Bitterns are a bit meh these days as they have colonised quite widely now.
Heh, just looked it up - I didn't know the history of its formation!. That was one of the two I was thinking of, the other being Fairburn Ings. You from around these parts, too?
Yes. Apparently I now live in a city...
I'm familiar with a lot of the local sites, so I guessed which ones you meant. Fairburn has done well - Spoonbills!
You two are near me. My Dad lives in Fairburn.
I only found out about how St Aidan's was formed recently. I was 10 when it happened but I can't remember hearing anything at all about it. Mind you, we got Tyne Tees region tele because, apparently, the cooling towers at Ferrybridge C blocked the Yorkshire TV region signal from my house and quite a few surrounding. I always feel slightly remote from the rest of Yorkshire cos I grew up watching local news that told me about happenings in Peterlee and Gateshead. Same with BBC.
Heh, had a similar situation a few years ago in the south. Big bridge completely blocked the local transmitter, so we needed a big aerial pointing the other way, instead.
No problems with Ferrybridge now, I guess, for anyone still watching actual over the air telly...
Food, education, urban parks*, public transport, culture, pubs etc are all better in London. Plus you have proximity to Europe.
New York is better for can-do attitude, salaries, taxation, hours of sunlight, and very easy proximity to the great outdoors. Plus, as I said above suburban (or perhaps exurban) housing is astonishingly cheap.
Healthcare is a wash, depending on your circumstances.
*Except Central Park, which has no peer in London.
New York is a lot colder and a lot hotter for a lot of the year though. I prefer the climate in london apart from spring and autumn when NY is much nicer.
It is too hot and sticky for about six weeks in summer. It’s really screwed up my running which I refuse to do above 25 degrees Celsius.
Winters are v cold but v bright. London’s three-month gloom depressed me.
Food, education, urban parks*, public transport, culture, pubs etc are all better in London. Plus you have proximity to Europe.
New York is better for can-do attitude, salaries, taxation, hours of sunlight, and very easy proximity to the great outdoors. Plus, as I said above suburban (or perhaps exurban) housing is astonishingly cheap.
Healthcare is a wash, depending on your circumstances.
*Except Central Park, which has no peer in London.
Central Park is okay, but I think you get better views from Greenwich Park and Hampstead Heath.
If you're in a seat that's been trending Conservative for several elections like Don Valley/Rother Valley/ Sedgefield, Bishop Auckland, the Stoke seats, you probably don't have much to worry about. These are all heading into the safe Conservative camp.
If you're in a seat that was just a fluke win, like Burnley, Leigh, you should be looking for another job.
If you're in a classic marginal, like Darlington, or High Peak, everything turns on the national state of play.
I like the clarity of the analysis though I don't fully agree. The trend may eventually secure your red wall seat by 2030, but losing Johnson / less Brexit agitation / energy bills could threaten any incumbent in particular. (There's a bigger conversation to have on PB about how long those trends will continue.)
I think the bigger issue in the first category of seats is that Labour, for a long time, punched above their socio-economic weight, because the memory of coal-mining was so strong. As the miners and ex-miners died off, thee seats moved rightwards at a rate of knots, as did (in earlier times) seats like Forest of Dean, NE Somerset, NW Leics. etc. Look at the swings to the Conservatives in these , since 1997, and they're in the high 20s, low 30s%.
And, mainly, the ex-mining seats are nice places to live. Housing is very affordable, relative to incomes, the cost of living is low, and the countryside is beautiful.
Countryside. The very nature of mine workings makes large areas of land unsuitable for building or farming. Plus you've got hills (slag heaps) and flashes where the workings have caved under rainfall to make lakes, on what was previously often a dull, flat landscape. Add 30 years to grow wild, and you've got some of the finest native habitats in England now.
There are a couple near us in W Yorkshire that are now RSPB nature reserves. Absolutely beautiful places. Housing nearby still cheap.
St Aidan's is a bit more than a flash though! What a stupid disaster that was. The River Aire apparently flowed backwards for a while...
The reserve near to us in the Flatlands has had breeding Black-winged stilts this year, which is quite a coup. Their Bitterns are a bit meh these days as they have colonised quite widely now.
Heh, just looked it up - I didn't know the history of its formation!. That was one of the two I was thinking of, the other being Fairburn Ings. You from around these parts, too?
Yes. Apparently I now live in a city...
I'm familiar with a lot of the local sites, so I guessed which ones you meant. Fairburn has done well - Spoonbills!
You two are near me. My Dad lives in Fairburn.
I only found out about how St Aidan's was formed recently. I was 10 when it happened but I can't remember hearing anything at all about it. Mind you, we got Tyne Tees region tele because, apparently, the cooling towers at Ferrybridge C blocked the Yorkshire TV region signal from my house and quite a few surrounding. I always feel slightly remote from the rest of Yorkshire cos I grew up watching local news that told me about happenings in Peterlee and Gateshead. Same with BBC.
Heh, had a similar situation a few years ago in the south. Big bridge completely blocked the local transmitter, so we needed a big aerial pointing the other way, instead.
No problems with Ferrybridge now, I guess, for anyone still watching actual over the air telly...
Food, education, urban parks*, public transport, culture, pubs etc are all better in London. Plus you have proximity to Europe.
New York is better for can-do attitude, salaries, taxation, hours of sunlight, and very easy proximity to the great outdoors. Plus, as I said above suburban (or perhaps exurban) housing is astonishingly cheap.
Healthcare is a wash, depending on your circumstances.
*Except Central Park, which has no peer in London.
Central Park is okay, but I think you get better views from Greenwich Park and Hampstead Heath.
Subjective of course, but I think you are talking out of your hat.
Keir was daft to make such a belt-and-braces promise to the membership. It reads like something from Michael Foot.
He is also daft to junk it, seemingly wholesale, when elements have never seemed more appropriate.
He might not have won if he hadn't though.
As for the current Labour strategy, I think the view is the Blues are on the way out due to a mixture of natural and self-inflicted causes and it's about taking no risks now, having the election to lose and making sure to not lose it, so the priority is giving the Tories and their media allies nothing tangible to get their teeth into and attack.
"Puppet of the Unions" - No "Spendthrift" - No "Dislike Britain" - No "Tax addicts" - No "Back to the 70s" - No "Obsessed with race" - No "Gender benders" - No "Anything scary at all" - No
Such attacks will still come - needless to say - but the idea is they'll be so obviously evidence free and smeary that their impact will be muted.
In this way will the chances of getting PM Starmer after the next GE - given the circumstances we have and the key players we have on either side - be maximized.
This plus a tacit deal with the LDs to increase the efficiency of the anti Con vote.
That's the deal, I think. It might not inspire but I think it's probably going to work. And Truss only helps.
Here's the Ottolenghi bread-and-tomato-and-anchovies salad recipe. Remember to use URFA chili flakes, from the home of Gobekli Tepe. Use any other kind of chili flake and it will be disgusting
Mint leaves 'roughly torn' To get the full benefit they should be roughly torn by a burly tradesman who carries a cache of reserved fennel fronds. What an absolute cock
No, it's not cock. This stuff genuinely makes a difference. I've tried it and noticed it
eg the salad caprese I just had. In a restaurant the mozzarella will often (nearly always?) be carefully sliced and neatly arrayed, interleaved with tomatoes. But I did my research and Jamie Oliver (and others) say to tear it up in rough chunks. Why? Because it creates a blob of cheese with a much more interesting mouthfeel, plus you have way more actual cheese surface - because of the roughness - which can then soak up the oil, vinegar, salt, tomato juice, mmmmness
It is exactly the same principle the Italians use in creating different pasta shapes. For different sauces you want different pastas depending on how much sauce you want the pasta to soak up, and how you want it soaked. Generally, the crinklier the pasta the better: it will retain more sauce on each bite of pasta
So yes, "roughly torn" is probably right, and you are wrong in this instance. Sorry
This is absolutely correct, but there are some people who just won’t be told.
The belief some people have that pasta is interchangeable drives me crazy.
Yes, totally!
"Pasta is pasta"
OMG no it isn't. Fusilli is completely different to spaghetti which is totally different to farfalle. Italians have been doing this for CENTURIES and they are not stupid bad cooks
It's like saying chips are like crisps (or vice versa if you are American)
Make me an alphabetti spaghetti sandwich (on a white warburtons sandwich loaf) and we can talk about them funny bow tie pastas you get in London restaurants
Comments
SKS's is a liar his leadership is a right-wing ideological project detached from Labour ideology.
I've just been to Waitrose and bought anchovies, capers, unwaxed lemon, basil, parsley, garlic and some nice bread.
Can't wait to have dinner now!
FWIW, I think the explanation is dishonesty.
Perhaps they didn't believe the long term price would ever go above the government cap.
It was a government decision to make them go bust, not a market one.
How can anything so cheap & simple be that good?
To be fair, I did go out and buy the absolute best ingredients along Parkway, from £2 a pop rare heritage tomatoes, to a £20 bottle of Lia Premium olive oil
https://www.waitrose.com/ecom/products/lia-extra-virgin-olive-oil/510799-499292-499293
to some ultra-fresh basil, the best buffalo mozzarella imaginable, a loaf of Borough Sourdough (toasted and rubbed with raw garlic), to grated kampot peppercorns and Ynys Mon sea salt, so my cheap easy delicious salad has just cost me about £40. And I ate it with two glasses of Edda Lei Bianco San Marzano wine so if I did this cheap easy lunch every day I'd be bankrupt in three months, but WTF it's sunny and hot
"There's no money left"
And see my prior post, you inspired me to have a cheap, easy salad caprese and now I am penniless
They claimed that a key problem was that the regulator and central Government didn't have enough engagement with them on a variety of areas (water metering, leakage reduction, infrastructure proposals).
I will admit to some cynicism, as their information on infrastructure plans has been dubious and self-serving at best in the past (causing significant embarrassment to themselves and the regulator when they were called out for redacting out almost every page in an Environmental Assessment report on grounds of "commercial sensitivity". Of course, at the time, I couldn't resist the sarcasm: "Could you explain why the course of the River Ock is commercially sensitive? Should we inform Ordnance Survey to classify the maps?")
It does, though, imply that the "arms-length" aspect of privatisation has gone too far.
The reserve near to us in the Flatlands has had breeding Black-winged stilts this year, which was quite a coup. Probably weather related since they normally reside in southern Europe. Their Bitterns are a bit meh these days as they have colonised quite widely now across a number of ex-industrial sites (Dearne Valley etc).
The main change has been the cleaning up of the rivers, which has mostly happened because the government hasn't had to pay for it (at least, not directly). One aspect of privatisation that did work, although there is obviously more to do.
https://www.telegraph.co.uk/business/2022/08/10/russia-starts-stripping-aircrafts-parts-sanctions-bite/
If i were Xi Jinping, I’d be lining up Chinese troops for exercises on the Russian border - just to see Putin’s reaction.
https://www.theguardian.com/lifeandstyle/2017/jul/08/fennel-salad-recipe-tomato-bread-asparagus-leek-grilled-tomato-watermelon-pea-soup-yotam-ottolenghi
https://twitter.com/LeaskyHT/status/1557651516298862594?s=20&t=cJMEJqMLxBHv6cPrUpz6mg
https://www.melira.com.gr/olive-products/organic-extremely-virgin-olive-oil/Organic-Oil-1lt
A beautiful lake which takes about 40 minutes to walk around with plenty of birdlife and about a square mile of forest attached to it.
I have a weird fetish for stupidly over-priced oil in really nice containers. I can't help buying them. I am a total sucker. I am sure in a blind taste test I wouldn't be able to differentiate them from standard Sainsbury's Own Brand Extra Virgin but fuck it, I just like opening my cupboard door and seeing them. Ranked up. The glowy yellow metal one from Corsica, the new porcelain job from Crete, the sober dark can from Sicily, the golden glassed one from Tuscany. I am now also the proud owner of some artisanal rapeseed oil from Hampshire in a magnificently serious dark green glass bottle, it stands there like an artwork
I totally need therapy
"Greater Manchester" is itself a bit of a misnomer anyway, after all Sir Graham Brady's postbox is in Greater Manchester too. Greater Manchester is more of a political construct than a real thing, I've never met anyone from Leigh who'd identify as being a Mancunian. if you told anyone in Leigh that they're in Manchester aside from the politics they'd laugh at you. If you tell them they're from Wigan, then you better have a good dentist.
It weakens Russia in case China wants to do something later.
It creates a weak Russia who need to deal with China as a supplicant.
It’s a distraction to the rest of the world from whatever China is doing now.
It suits Xi ahead of selection by the party coming up to be able to point out its not time to change Chinese leadership with war on.
The longer the war goes on the more the Chinese can learn about different weapons systems they might have and Taiwan might have.
Ultimately they can put troops near border which would clearly end the Ukraine war as Russia would have to scramble east which again gives China the power of being the power broker to the world in the eyes of the “non-west” which is very useful long term.
But it would still be very funny to see Putin’s face of it happened.
I'm familiar with a lot of the local sites, so I guessed which ones you meant. Fairburn has done well - Spoonbills!
Blockquote having a day.
https://mobile.twitter.com/thorstenbenner/status/1557666775357169664
"This is Putin's war and that is why I have a hard time with this idea".
Scholz on blanket visa ban for Russian citizens.
He is also daft to junk it, seemingly wholesale, when elements have never seemed more appropriate.
There is no reason to go to Leigh from any of these places.
So it retains a little of the small town feel.
But, yes, the outer villages are booming certainly. Town centre not so much.
Essential.
To get the full benefit they should be roughly torn by a burly tradesman who carries a cache of reserved fennel fronds.
What an absolute cock
They all seem very happy, I must say
An old friend of mine is back from California with his younger wife. Now abiding in the Thames Valley. She has never been to the UK before and absolutely adores it. Everyone tries to tell her this weather is not normal, but she is adamant it's not just the weather. She loves it in England - lack of crime, no guns, healthcare, history, the usual
I do wonder if we are going to see a migration of Americans to London/UK if American turbulence continues
The Truss: Economically Laissez-Faire, Socially Liberal
Red Wall: Economically Interventionist, Socially Conservative
Conclusion: The Red Wall Tory MPs are fecked.
I'm glad my folks are back from holiday tomorrow (in Sandbanks this time, so unlikely to bring back fancy olive oil!), and they can help me eat them
eg the salad caprese I just had. In a restaurant the mozzarella will often (nearly always?) be carefully sliced and neatly arrayed, interleaved with tomatoes. But I did my research and Jamie Oliver (and others) say to tear it up in rough chunks. Why? Because it creates a blob of cheese with a much more interesting mouthfeel, plus you have way more actual cheese surface - because of the roughness - which can then soak up the oil, vinegar, salt, tomato juice, mmmmness
It is exactly the same principle the Italians use in creating different pasta shapes. For different sauces you want different pastas depending on how much sauce you want the pasta to soak up, and how you want it soaked. Generally, the crinklier the pasta the better: it will retain more sauce on each bite of pasta
So yes, "roughly torn" is probably right, and you are wrong in this instance. Sorry
I know Americans eyeing the UK “if Trump wins again”, and Brits eyeing the US because the wage / tax / housing equation is generally more favourable (for the sort of people who might migrate).
Bridgend Central, Bridgend Council - L defending: C, L, LD, G, Ind
Dodderhill, Wychavon Council - C defending: C, LD, G
Laleham and Shepperton Green, Spelthorne Council - Ind (ex-C) defending: C, LD, TUSC
Andrew Teale's review https://medium.com/britainelects/previewing-the-three-council-by-elections-of-11th-august-2022-41782e0a903a
The belief some people have that pasta is interchangeable drives me crazy.
And if I was an American with the necessary money I would move. Nick Clegg is right. And if the English language and a big world city is important to you, it has to be London
However Europe might be engulfed in civil strife, widespread famine, and terrible Putin-esque wars in about 6 weeks, and America will seem like a dreamland, so I'm going to hold off on a definitive call
"Pasta is pasta"
OMG no it isn't. Fusilli is completely different to spaghetti which is totally different to farfalle. Italians have been doing this for CENTURIES and they are not stupid bad cooks
It's like saying chips are like crisps (or vice versa if you are American)
Please tell this to @dyedwoolie
Housing costs consume so much of British incomes.
Hence Farage attacking Truss this morning
https://twitter.com/Nigel_Farage/status/1557662615475724289?s=20&t=shtNl-xCp7o0vKDkmZZzug
On the other hand I can be in Paris in two hours, city centre to city centre, or indeed anywhere in western Europe by a plane, Venice to Rome, Barcelona to Biarritz, Stockholm to Sardinia. The European equivalent of America's accessible natural landscapes is varied and incredible human civilisation, all around
Plus, European natural landscapes are not entirely boring
I only found out about how St Aidan's was formed recently. I was 10 when it happened but I can't remember hearing anything at all about it. Mind you, we got Tyne Tees region tele because, apparently, the cooling towers at Ferrybridge C blocked the Yorkshire TV region signal from my house and quite a few surrounding. I always feel slightly remote from the rest of Yorkshire cos I grew up watching local news that told me about happenings in Peterlee and Gateshead. Same with BBC.
And in geopolitical terms, it's been a while since America was this popular in Europe I would guess, but war with Russia would have that sort of effect.
The average American life is now notably worse than the average European life, in multiple ways. For the top 10% in the USA life is still absolutely fabulous, but that is the case in most parts of the world
Food, education, urban parks*, public transport, culture, pubs etc are all better in London. Plus you have proximity to Europe.
New York is better for can-do attitude, salaries, taxation, hours of sunlight, and very easy proximity to the great outdoors. Plus, as I said above suburban (or perhaps exurban) housing is astonishingly cheap.
Healthcare is a wash, depending on your circumstances.
*Except Central Park, which has no peer in London.
Apparently there have been "technical problems" at the small reservoir nearby to it. It's possible that it's dried out, but two factors make that raise more questions than answers: Farmoor reservoir (the largest one currently in Oxfordshire; a different reservoir) is at nearly 90% of capacity, and reservoirs shouldn't run down beyond about 20% due to algae blooms. Makes me wonder if some sort of plug was accidentally pulled.
Moreover, only half the village is out of water. Somehow, TW is only supplying that half of the village from that small reservoir; everywhere else is properly linked up (the village has had long-running problems).
Beyond that, we're getting into the argument about SESRO (reservoir) versus STT (Severn-Thames Transfer linking all the way to United Utilities).
SESRO: 15 yrs at least to build (assuming a megaproject like this comes in on schedule - this is a scale beyond any bunded reservoir ever attempted in the UK) plus at least two years to fill from the Thames (assuming the Thames has plentiful water for both years). Totally dependent on the Thames (so suceptible to single-region droughts), max water output of 290 Ml/day, numbers don't close to fulfil the criterion of avoiding rare droughts. Huge environmental impacts (it's a bad place to build a reservoir; the only justification is that many other places in the Thames Valley are even worse). On a floodplain, so would screw up towns and villages nearby in flood season. Would cause regular fogs over the A34. Unknown what the effects of flexing 150,000,000 tonnes on and off the clay floor of the Vale would be.
STT: 2-3 yrs to build (known and familiar technology). Immediately available once built. 300-500 Ml/day water output. Resilient to even two-region droughts, let alone a single-region drought. No disruption or environmental issues.
Thames Water don't want STT to come first, or even at all. Original plans were "we'll consider STT after 2080." With the 290Ml/day from SESRO, they say they may well not need it at all.
They've been forced to bring it forward to the 2050s. We want them to build STT first (far quicker, half the price, no disruption or environmental impact, drought resilience way beyond what is needed), and then see if a reservoir is needed afterwards. And, if so, where would be best for it with the greater reach.
Drawbacks to STT from Thames Water's point of view: not a valuable commercial asset, does not provide water they own and can sell on to Affinity Water and Southern Water. And if STT is built, they'll probably never get SESRO.
Same as few Brits ever move to the US Midwest or South (outside Florida) just mainly to New York, the North East and West Coast
It’s certainly true for the bottom 30% or 40%.
It then gets progressively less true, depending precisely where in the US.
Looking at key metros, SF, LA and NYC are in certain respects quite dysfunctional such that unless you are in the top 10% or 5% you might be better off in Europe.
What is undeniably true is that there are vast swathes of Americans living in big houses with big cars, far away from poor people with all their problems, living incredibly comfortably.
No problems with Ferrybridge now, I guess, for anyone still watching actual over the air telly...
Winters are v cold but v bright. London’s three-month gloom depressed me.
As for the current Labour strategy, I think the view is the Blues are on the way out due to a mixture of natural and self-inflicted causes and it's about taking no risks now, having the election to lose and making sure to not lose it, so the priority is giving the Tories and their media allies nothing tangible to get their teeth into and attack.
"Puppet of the Unions" - No
"Spendthrift" - No
"Dislike Britain" - No
"Tax addicts" - No
"Back to the 70s" - No
"Obsessed with race" - No
"Gender benders" - No
"Anything scary at all" - No
Such attacks will still come - needless to say - but the idea is they'll be so obviously evidence free and smeary that their impact will be muted.
In this way will the chances of getting PM Starmer after the next GE - given the circumstances we have and the key players we have on either side - be maximized.
This plus a tacit deal with the LDs to increase the efficiency of the anti Con vote.
That's the deal, I think. It might not inspire but I think it's probably going to work. And Truss only helps.