Cash will become less useable as high street shops increasingly reject bank notes because of the rise in digital payments, a senior Bank of England official has said.
It will become harder to spend physical money in the coming years because contactless payments are on the rise and consumers are increasingly turning to the internet for purchases, according to Sir Jon Cunliffe, a deputy governor at the central bank and a member of its rate-setting committee.
The shift away from physical cash to electronic payments has been very clear and is set to continue, he said, adding that the Bank should continue to develop an electronic version of the currency, known as the “digital pound”, to maintain confidence in the country’s banking system.
“Cash is likely to decline further and cash itself will become less useable in everyday transactions; for example, if internet commerce grows and if merchants increasingly accept only digital payment,” Cunliffe told the Innovate Finance Global Summit yesterday.
Card payments overtook cash to become the most dominant form of payment in the retail sector in 2016. Five years later, 85 per cent of payments were made digitally, via bank transfers or card payments. Ninety per cent of people use contactless payments and nearly a third of adults in the UK use Apple Pay, Google Pay or other apps that facilitate mobile payments.
Cunliffe said: “Most obviously, what I have called the digitalisation of everyday life will continue. The growth of internet commerce or use of banking and payments apps, for example, is forecast to grow and unlikely to stop.”
The Bank has said it will continue to issue cash as long as there is any demand for it.
A friend got scammed at an ATM at the weekend and his cards were stopped by the bank. Until they are replaced, he can only buy things with cash. Is the Bank of England proposing to eliminate crime before it eliminates cash?
That's why you should always have two separate identities, so you always have one that still works and has access to bank accounts.
Plus, this way you get to access to two tax free personal allowances.
8C and leaden skies in the rugged Primrose Hill borderlands
UGH
Do you need a new thermometer or is 8 the overnight low?
That's what it is now in NW1. 8C with a chilly wind, so it feels considerably colder. Not a peep of sun. Grim
I thought Camden is pretty grim even when the sun is shining. Get back to your roots and go to Cornwall. It is beautiful there even when it is driving sleet.
This is why we have to keep on backing Ukraine and see Russia lose, the Russians cannot be rewarded for this.
Two former Russian mercenaries have admitted killing hundreds of Ukrainian civilians, including dozens of children who were sheltering in a basement in eastern Ukraine.
Alexey Savichev and Azamat Uldarov told a Russian human rights activist that they had been recruited from Russian prisons to fight in Ukraine for the Wagner Group, the private military company that is headed by Yevgeny Prigozhin, a Kremlin-linked tycoon.
Uldarov, who appeared to have been drinking, said that in one incident, he and his fellow mercenaries massacred between 300 and 400 people, including about 40 children, who had taken refuge in the basement of a nine-floor block of flats in Bakhmut, the town in the Donbas region which has seen some of the heaviest fighting of the war.
I posted that yesterday. It’s NAZI levels of repulsive brutality.
Good god. Some of the details
"Savichev said he was aware of about 70 Russian inmates who had been killed by Wagner forces after refusing to carry out orders. “We didn’t consider them Russian citizens there,” he said. One Wagner mercenary was executed after a conflict involving forces loyal to Ramzan Kadyrov, the Kremlin-installed leader of Chechnya, he said."
If you refused to kill the children, they killed YOU
8C and leaden skies in the rugged Primrose Hill borderlands
UGH
Quite sunny and 15° in Leicester.
Apparently the Western Isles are bathed in fine sunshine! - 18C and cloudless skies in Portreee, Skye, today
The weather map has been inverted
So far this has been one of the nastier springs I can remember. A decidedly wet, dull March - worst for forty years, is being followed by a cold grey April. It's a bit like the endless winter that was lockdown 3 in early 2021
Tho I did manage to get 9 weeks in southeast Asia from Jan to March this winter, so maybe I should wheesht ma groaning
"Haud yer wheesht" is the correct terminology. But far better to leave this to the professionals.
On the subject of UK PLC selling off its crown jewels, buying companies and immediately loading them up with debt is not just for football clubs, it seems.
8C and leaden skies in the rugged Primrose Hill borderlands
UGH
Quite sunny and 15° in Leicester.
Apparently the Western Isles are bathed in fine sunshine! - 18C and cloudless skies in Portreee, Skye, today
The weather map has been inverted
So far this has been one of the nastier springs I can remember. A decidedly wet, dull March - worst for forty years, is being followed by a cold grey April. It's a bit like the endless winter that was lockdown 3 in early 2021
Tho I did manage to get 9 weeks in southeast Asia from Jan to March this winter, so maybe I should wheesht ma groaning
"Haud yer wheesht" is the correct terminology. But far better to leave this to the professionals.
(hwiːʃ ) or wheesht (hwiːʃt ) Scottish. exclamation. 1. a plea or demand for silence; hush. verb.
Cash will become less useable as high street shops increasingly reject bank notes because of the rise in digital payments, a senior Bank of England official has said.
It will become harder to spend physical money in the coming years because contactless payments are on the rise and consumers are increasingly turning to the internet for purchases, according to Sir Jon Cunliffe, a deputy governor at the central bank and a member of its rate-setting committee.
The shift away from physical cash to electronic payments has been very clear and is set to continue, he said, adding that the Bank should continue to develop an electronic version of the currency, known as the “digital pound”, to maintain confidence in the country’s banking system.
“Cash is likely to decline further and cash itself will become less useable in everyday transactions; for example, if internet commerce grows and if merchants increasingly accept only digital payment,” Cunliffe told the Innovate Finance Global Summit yesterday.
Card payments overtook cash to become the most dominant form of payment in the retail sector in 2016. Five years later, 85 per cent of payments were made digitally, via bank transfers or card payments. Ninety per cent of people use contactless payments and nearly a third of adults in the UK use Apple Pay, Google Pay or other apps that facilitate mobile payments.
Cunliffe said: “Most obviously, what I have called the digitalisation of everyday life will continue. The growth of internet commerce or use of banking and payments apps, for example, is forecast to grow and unlikely to stop.”
The Bank has said it will continue to issue cash as long as there is any demand for it.
A friend got scammed at an ATM at the weekend and his cards were stopped by the bank. Until they are replaced, he can only buy things with cash. Is the Bank of England proposing to eliminate crime before it eliminates cash?
That's why you should always have two separate identities, so you always have one that still works and has access to bank accounts.
Plus, this way you get to access to two tax free personal allowances.
Very quiet in here. I guess the normally bombastic Nats have gone off in a collective sulk. Lol.
Having two threads going at once doesn't help debate
Had a look over there and they are quiet on that one too. Malcolm is still trying to think of an abusive response to my post at 5:02 that doesn't take too long to type using one finger.
It’s closed, but feel free to batter away at your keyboard on it.
I’d really like to see a Scottish poll. Could Alba be in double figures?
Let us hope not. A party founded and led by a man described by his defence barrister as a "bully and a sex pest" should be destined for oblivion in any civilised country.
I can’t recall who founded the Tories, but I understand Bozo says ‘Hi’!
I can't recall that anyone accused any of Robert Peel, William Pitt the Younger or Edward Hyde of those.
Many, many other things, particularly Hyde. But not sex pests.
This is why we have to keep on backing Ukraine and see Russia lose, the Russians cannot be rewarded for this.
Two former Russian mercenaries have admitted killing hundreds of Ukrainian civilians, including dozens of children who were sheltering in a basement in eastern Ukraine.
Alexey Savichev and Azamat Uldarov told a Russian human rights activist that they had been recruited from Russian prisons to fight in Ukraine for the Wagner Group, the private military company that is headed by Yevgeny Prigozhin, a Kremlin-linked tycoon.
Uldarov, who appeared to have been drinking, said that in one incident, he and his fellow mercenaries massacred between 300 and 400 people, including about 40 children, who had taken refuge in the basement of a nine-floor block of flats in Bakhmut, the town in the Donbas region which has seen some of the heaviest fighting of the war.
I posted that yesterday. It’s NAZI levels of repulsive brutality.
Good god. Some of the details
"Savichev said he was aware of about 70 Russian inmates who had been killed by Wagner forces after refusing to carry out orders. “We didn’t consider them Russian citizens there,” he said. One Wagner mercenary was executed after a conflict involving forces loyal to Ramzan Kadyrov, the Kremlin-installed leader of Chechnya, he said."
If you refused to kill the children, they killed YOU
And yet, even on this site, there is one poster who is an apologist for Putin and refers to this brutal war-crime sodden war of aggression as "the SMO".
8C and leaden skies in the rugged Primrose Hill borderlands
UGH
Quite sunny and 15° in Leicester.
Apparently the Western Isles are bathed in fine sunshine! - 18C and cloudless skies in Portreee, Skye, today
The weather map has been inverted
So far this has been one of the nastier springs I can remember. A decidedly wet, dull March - worst for forty years, is being followed by a cold grey April. It's a bit like the endless winter that was lockdown 3 in early 2021
Tho I did manage to get 9 weeks in southeast Asia from Jan to March this winter, so maybe I should wheesht ma groaning
"Haud yer wheesht" is the correct terminology. But far better to leave this to the professionals.
(hwiːʃ ) or wheesht (hwiːʃt ) Scottish. exclamation. 1. a plea or demand for silence; hush. verb.
Yes. As in "wheesht!" = shut up. I've never seen it employed as a transitive verb though. "Haud yer wheesht" is the phrase usually used. Against stiff competition I would say that innapropriate use of Scottish terminology is your most annoying habit!
Question: "How many votes did Tony Blair receive in the Sedgefield constituency at the 1997 UK general election?"
Answer: "Tony Blair, who was the leader of the Labour Party at the time, stood for election in the Sedgefield constituency at the 1997 UK general election. The result of the election in Sedgefield was as follows:
Tony Blair (Labour Party) - 34,333 votes (71.6%) Tim Garden (Conservative Party) - 8,817 votes (18.4%) Alex White (Liberal Democrats) - 3,065 votes (6.4%) Others - 1,297 votes (2.7%)"
But there must now be a significant proportion of the Yes vote in 2014 thinking that if independence had happened in 2014, the current clown troupe would have trashed Scotland.
Independence still maybe - but with some serious intellectual heft first. Those able to make a case for how Scotland responds to issues like currency, pensions, head of state - they seem to be in awfully short supply.
This might be an interesting time for Sunak to set up a Royal Commission into Scottish independence, to examine in forensic detail exactly how Scotland might look post independence - and the difficult choices the Scots (and rUK) might have to make.
The SNP have got away with forcing the case in an in intellectual vacuum.
You could have at least corrected the typo. But good stuff, admitting that the case for the Union has been an intellectual vacuum is startlingly honest.
Trying to look smug, you just look like a place on Orkney.
There is a very good reason independence failed. And you are the epitome.
Despite your portentous 'insights', fuck all to do with you either way of course.
Typical offensive posting from you. There is never anything else.
This is a betting site. My portentous "insights" were in line with the SNP losing the referendum.
Badly.
I hope you bet accordingly.
The catastrofuck that is the SNP As Of This Moment seems to have robbed @Theuniondivvie of his trenchant wit, leaving behind only the pungent bile. It is a sad and unpretty spectacle
I never really noticed anything other than the pungent bile. Pungent bile is the base and dominant material that nats are made from.
Not all nats are the same Nigel, even on here there are variations in style and tone.
"In its fight against the $1.6 billion defamation lawsuit brought by Dominion Voting Systems, Fox News has shifted its strategy to blaming former President Donald Trump, Newsweek reported." https://twitter.com/RealNoraC/status/1648365881334939655
“A big orange man did it and ran away.”
They’ve also submitted a Simpsons clip as part of the defence filing.
Very quiet in here. I guess the normally bombastic Nats have gone off in a collective sulk. Lol.
Having two threads going at once doesn't help debate
Had a look over there and they are quiet on that one too. Malcolm is still trying to think of an abusive response to my post at 5:02 that doesn't take too long to type using one finger.
It’s closed, but feel free to batter away at your keyboard on it.
Thanks for the suggestion, but that would be as futile as hoping for an intellectual response from Malcolm or a sunny optimistic view of the world from you.
But there must now be a significant proportion of the Yes vote in 2014 thinking that if independence had happened in 2014, the current clown troupe would have trashed Scotland.
Independence still maybe - but with some serious intellectual heft first. Those able to make a case for how Scotland responds to issues like currency, pensions, head of state - they seem to be in awfully short supply.
This might be an interesting time for Sunak to set up a Royal Commission into Scottish independence, to examine in forensic detail exactly how Scotland might look post independence - and the difficult choices the Scots (and rUK) might have to make.
The SNP have got away with forcing the case in an in intellectual vacuum.
You could have at least corrected the typo. But good stuff, admitting that the case for the Union has been an intellectual vacuum is startlingly honest.
Trying to look smug, you just look like a place on Orkney.
There is a very good reason independence failed. And you are the epitome.
Despite your portentous 'insights', fuck all to do with you either way of course.
Typical offensive posting from you. There is never anything else.
This is a betting site. My portentous "insights" were in line with the SNP losing the referendum.
Badly.
I hope you bet accordingly.
The catastrofuck that is the SNP As Of This Moment seems to have robbed @Theuniondivvie of his trenchant wit, leaving behind only the pungent bile. It is a sad and unpretty spectacle
I never really noticed anything other than the pungent bile. Pungent bile is the base and dominant material that nats are made from.
Not all nats are the same Nigel, even on here there are variations in style and tone.
You are right. Carnyx seems quite a nice chap. And then there is....oh hang on........
8C and leaden skies in the rugged Primrose Hill borderlands
UGH
Quite sunny and 15° in Leicester.
Apparently the Western Isles are bathed in fine sunshine! - 18C and cloudless skies in Portreee, Skye, today
The weather map has been inverted
So far this has been one of the nastier springs I can remember. A decidedly wet, dull March - worst for forty years, is being followed by a cold grey April. It's a bit like the endless winter that was lockdown 3 in early 2021
Tho I did manage to get 9 weeks in southeast Asia from Jan to March this winter, so maybe I should wheesht ma groaning
"Haud yer wheesht" is the correct terminology. But far better to leave this to the professionals.
(hwiːʃ ) or wheesht (hwiːʃt ) Scottish. exclamation. 1. a plea or demand for silence; hush. verb.
Yes. As in "wheesht!" = shut up. I've never seen it employed as a transitive verb though. "Haud yer wheesht" is the phrase usually used. Against stiff competition I would say that innapropriate use of Scottish terminology is your most annoying habit!
Not to mention the use of loon in completely the wrong sense [edit] by PB in general. As a descendant of Doric farmworkers (probably), I regret this expropriation of my heritage.
But there must now be a significant proportion of the Yes vote in 2014 thinking that if independence had happened in 2014, the current clown troupe would have trashed Scotland.
Independence still maybe - but with some serious intellectual heft first. Those able to make a case for how Scotland responds to issues like currency, pensions, head of state - they seem to be in awfully short supply.
This might be an interesting time for Sunak to set up a Royal Commission into Scottish independence, to examine in forensic detail exactly how Scotland might look post independence - and the difficult choices the Scots (and rUK) might have to make.
The SNP have got away with forcing the case in an in intellectual vacuum.
You could have at least corrected the typo. But good stuff, admitting that the case for the Union has been an intellectual vacuum is startlingly honest.
Trying to look smug, you just look like a place on Orkney.
There is a very good reason independence failed. And you are the epitome.
Despite your portentous 'insights', fuck all to do with you either way of course.
Typical offensive posting from you. There is never anything else.
This is a betting site. My portentous "insights" were in line with the SNP losing the referendum.
Badly.
I hope you bet accordingly.
The catastrofuck that is the SNP As Of This Moment seems to have robbed @Theuniondivvie of his trenchant wit, leaving behind only the pungent bile. It is a sad and unpretty spectacle
I could never match ‘Shut up, you paedo’ or ‘intern all Muslims now’ in the wit stakes.
Seems odd that the incontrovertible truth that the future of Scotland has fuck all to do with tourist class lads like yourself and the doyenne of the doorstep & crap Harry & Megs scoops should be characterised as pungent bile. Is there a sweeter way to sugar that pill that you’d prefer?
This is why we have to keep on backing Ukraine and see Russia lose, the Russians cannot be rewarded for this.
Two former Russian mercenaries have admitted killing hundreds of Ukrainian civilians, including dozens of children who were sheltering in a basement in eastern Ukraine.
Alexey Savichev and Azamat Uldarov told a Russian human rights activist that they had been recruited from Russian prisons to fight in Ukraine for the Wagner Group, the private military company that is headed by Yevgeny Prigozhin, a Kremlin-linked tycoon.
Uldarov, who appeared to have been drinking, said that in one incident, he and his fellow mercenaries massacred between 300 and 400 people, including about 40 children, who had taken refuge in the basement of a nine-floor block of flats in Bakhmut, the town in the Donbas region which has seen some of the heaviest fighting of the war.
I posted that yesterday. It’s NAZI levels of repulsive brutality.
Good god. Some of the details
"Savichev said he was aware of about 70 Russian inmates who had been killed by Wagner forces after refusing to carry out orders. “We didn’t consider them Russian citizens there,” he said. One Wagner mercenary was executed after a conflict involving forces loyal to Ramzan Kadyrov, the Kremlin-installed leader of Chechnya, he said."
If you refused to kill the children, they killed YOU
And yet, even on this site, there is one poster who is an apologist for Putin and refers to this brutal war-crime sodden war of aggression as "the SMO".
What's more, this pointless tragic cruel and unwinnable war of naked aggression will probably end in some stagnant armistice, with neither side able to claim real victory, and half a million dead, and millions more raped, tortured, traumatised, and displaced, and entire cities reduced to dust for decades
Without question one of the "worst" geopolitical events in my entire life
But there must now be a significant proportion of the Yes vote in 2014 thinking that if independence had happened in 2014, the current clown troupe would have trashed Scotland.
Independence still maybe - but with some serious intellectual heft first. Those able to make a case for how Scotland responds to issues like currency, pensions, head of state - they seem to be in awfully short supply.
This might be an interesting time for Sunak to set up a Royal Commission into Scottish independence, to examine in forensic detail exactly how Scotland might look post independence - and the difficult choices the Scots (and rUK) might have to make.
The SNP have got away with forcing the case in an in intellectual vacuum.
You could have at least corrected the typo. But good stuff, admitting that the case for the Union has been an intellectual vacuum is startlingly honest.
Trying to look smug, you just look like a place on Orkney.
There is a very good reason independence failed. And you are the epitome.
Despite your portentous 'insights', fuck all to do with you either way of course.
Typical offensive posting from you. There is never anything else.
This is a betting site. My portentous "insights" were in line with the SNP losing the referendum.
Badly.
I hope you bet accordingly.
The catastrofuck that is the SNP As Of This Moment seems to have robbed @Theuniondivvie of his trenchant wit, leaving behind only the pungent bile. It is a sad and unpretty spectacle
I could never match ‘Shut up, you paedo’ or ‘intern all Muslims now’ in the wit stakes.
Seems odd that the incontrovertible truth that the future of Scotland has fuck all to do with tourist class lads like yourself and the doyenne of the doorstep & crap Harry & Megs scoops should be characterised as pungent bile. Is there a sweeter way to sugar that pill that you’d prefer?
Calm down dear. I might have to recommend the same anger management classes that Malcom hasn't been to.
But there must now be a significant proportion of the Yes vote in 2014 thinking that if independence had happened in 2014, the current clown troupe would have trashed Scotland.
Independence still maybe - but with some serious intellectual heft first. Those able to make a case for how Scotland responds to issues like currency, pensions, head of state - they seem to be in awfully short supply.
This might be an interesting time for Sunak to set up a Royal Commission into Scottish independence, to examine in forensic detail exactly how Scotland might look post independence - and the difficult choices the Scots (and rUK) might have to make.
The SNP have got away with forcing the case in an in intellectual vacuum.
You could have at least corrected the typo. But good stuff, admitting that the case for the Union has been an intellectual vacuum is startlingly honest.
Trying to look smug, you just look like a place on Orkney.
There is a very good reason independence failed. And you are the epitome.
Despite your portentous 'insights', fuck all to do with you either way of course.
Typical offensive posting from you. There is never anything else.
This is a betting site. My portentous "insights" were in line with the SNP losing the referendum.
Badly.
I hope you bet accordingly.
The catastrofuck that is the SNP As Of This Moment seems to have robbed @Theuniondivvie of his trenchant wit, leaving behind only the pungent bile. It is a sad and unpretty spectacle
I could never match ‘Shut up, you paedo’ or ‘intern all Muslims now’ in the wit stakes.
Seems odd that the incontrovertible truth that the future of Scotland has fuck all to do with tourist class lads like yourself and the doyenne of the doorstep & crap Harry & Megs scoops should be characterised as pungent bile. Is there a sweeter way to sugar that pill that you’d prefer?
And yet, for all of the current fiasco, the popularity of independence for Scotland is very resilient.
Better our own crooks in Holyrood than the crooks at Westminster, I suppose.
Chase has been bribing me to borrow from them. When I make a purchase with their credit card, they give me at least a 1.5 percent discount. (One exception: payments to governments.) As long as I pay it off within a month, which I always have since getting the card, they charge me no interest.
So I have been using it for all but the smallest purchases, for me less than 20 dollars.
I understand why they do this, but wish they wouldn't encourage consumers to go into debt this way.
And suspect it would be less profitable were more Americans willing and able to do simple math.
(In the US, credit card purchases have legal protections that debit cards don't, whch gives consumers an additional reason to purchase on credit.)
But there must now be a significant proportion of the Yes vote in 2014 thinking that if independence had happened in 2014, the current clown troupe would have trashed Scotland.
Independence still maybe - but with some serious intellectual heft first. Those able to make a case for how Scotland responds to issues like currency, pensions, head of state - they seem to be in awfully short supply.
This might be an interesting time for Sunak to set up a Royal Commission into Scottish independence, to examine in forensic detail exactly how Scotland might look post independence - and the difficult choices the Scots (and rUK) might have to make.
The SNP have got away with forcing the case in an in intellectual vacuum.
You could have at least corrected the typo. But good stuff, admitting that the case for the Union has been an intellectual vacuum is startlingly honest.
Trying to look smug, you just look like a place on Orkney.
There is a very good reason independence failed. And you are the epitome.
Despite your portentous 'insights', fuck all to do with you either way of course.
Typical offensive posting from you. There is never anything else.
This is a betting site. My portentous "insights" were in line with the SNP losing the referendum.
Badly.
I hope you bet accordingly.
The catastrofuck that is the SNP As Of This Moment seems to have robbed @Theuniondivvie of his trenchant wit, leaving behind only the pungent bile. It is a sad and unpretty spectacle
I could never match ‘Shut up, you paedo’ or ‘intern all Muslims now’ in the wit stakes.
Seems odd that the incontrovertible truth that the future of Scotland has fuck all to do with tourist class lads like yourself and the doyenne of the doorstep & crap Harry & Megs scoops should be characterised as pungent bile. Is there a sweeter way to sugar that pill that you’d prefer?
There you go again. The words are still there, but you now seem incapable of using them with any dexterity or humour, and in your desperation you strain for effect and approach total unintelligibility. Like a bran damaged boxer mistakenly punching the cat
On topic, sorta - Perhaps worth noting, that in 1948 presidential election, the name of incumbent POTUS and Democratic Party nominee Harry Truman, did NOT appear on election ballots in the state of Alabama. Consequently, he received zero votes, not even any write-ins (officially, anyway).
Why? Because the Alabama Democratic Party officially nominated States Rights ("Dixiecrat") Democratic candidate Strom Thurmond, as the official Democratic Party nominee under Alabama state law.
Also, in 1912, when former President Theodore Roosevelt challenged his hand-picked successor, William Howard Taft, for the GOP nomination, then ran anyway as Progressive ("Bull Moose") Party nominee, the Rough Rider was NOT on the November ballot in state of Oklahoma. Don't know why, but my guess is TR may have fallen afoul of a "sore loser" law banning candidates who contest but lose party primary, from running in general election.
But there must now be a significant proportion of the Yes vote in 2014 thinking that if independence had happened in 2014, the current clown troupe would have trashed Scotland.
Independence still maybe - but with some serious intellectual heft first. Those able to make a case for how Scotland responds to issues like currency, pensions, head of state - they seem to be in awfully short supply.
This might be an interesting time for Sunak to set up a Royal Commission into Scottish independence, to examine in forensic detail exactly how Scotland might look post independence - and the difficult choices the Scots (and rUK) might have to make.
The SNP have got away with forcing the case in an in intellectual vacuum.
You could have at least corrected the typo. But good stuff, admitting that the case for the Union has been an intellectual vacuum is startlingly honest.
Trying to look smug, you just look like a place on Orkney.
There is a very good reason independence failed. And you are the epitome.
Despite your portentous 'insights', fuck all to do with you either way of course.
Typical offensive posting from you. There is never anything else.
This is a betting site. My portentous "insights" were in line with the SNP losing the referendum.
Badly.
I hope you bet accordingly.
The catastrofuck that is the SNP As Of This Moment seems to have robbed @Theuniondivvie of his trenchant wit, leaving behind only the pungent bile. It is a sad and unpretty spectacle
I could never match ‘Shut up, you paedo’ or ‘intern all Muslims now’ in the wit stakes.
Seems odd that the incontrovertible truth that the future of Scotland has fuck all to do with tourist class lads like yourself and the doyenne of the doorstep & crap Harry & Megs scoops should be characterised as pungent bile. Is there a sweeter way to sugar that pill that you’d prefer?
There you go again. The words are still there, but you now seem incapable of using them with any dexterity or humour, and in your desperation you strain for effect and approach total unintelligibility. Like a bran damaged boxer mistakenly punching the cat
8C and leaden skies in the rugged Primrose Hill borderlands
UGH
Quite sunny and 15° in Leicester.
Apparently the Western Isles are bathed in fine sunshine! - 18C and cloudless skies in Portreee, Skye, today
The weather map has been inverted
So far this has been one of the nastier springs I can remember. A decidedly wet, dull March - worst for forty years, is being followed by a cold grey April. It's a bit like the endless winter that was lockdown 3 in early 2021
Tho I did manage to get 9 weeks in southeast Asia from Jan to March this winter, so maybe I should wheesht ma groaning
"Haud yer wheesht" is the correct terminology. But far better to leave this to the professionals.
(hwiːʃ ) or wheesht (hwiːʃt ) Scottish. exclamation. 1. a plea or demand for silence; hush. verb.
Yes. As in "wheesht!" = shut up. I've never seen it employed as a transitive verb though. "Haud yer wheesht" is the phrase usually used. Against stiff competition I would say that innapropriate use of Scottish terminology is your most annoying habit!
Wheesht yersel or I shall be forced to stramash you
Cash will become less useable as high street shops increasingly reject bank notes because of the rise in digital payments, a senior Bank of England official has said.
It will become harder to spend physical money in the coming years because contactless payments are on the rise and consumers are increasingly turning to the internet for purchases, according to Sir Jon Cunliffe, a deputy governor at the central bank and a member of its rate-setting committee.
The shift away from physical cash to electronic payments has been very clear and is set to continue, he said, adding that the Bank should continue to develop an electronic version of the currency, known as the “digital pound”, to maintain confidence in the country’s banking system.
“Cash is likely to decline further and cash itself will become less useable in everyday transactions; for example, if internet commerce grows and if merchants increasingly accept only digital payment,” Cunliffe told the Innovate Finance Global Summit yesterday.
Card payments overtook cash to become the most dominant form of payment in the retail sector in 2016. Five years later, 85 per cent of payments were made digitally, via bank transfers or card payments. Ninety per cent of people use contactless payments and nearly a third of adults in the UK use Apple Pay, Google Pay or other apps that facilitate mobile payments.
Cunliffe said: “Most obviously, what I have called the digitalisation of everyday life will continue. The growth of internet commerce or use of banking and payments apps, for example, is forecast to grow and unlikely to stop.”
The Bank has said it will continue to issue cash as long as there is any demand for it.
A friend got scammed at an ATM at the weekend and his cards were stopped by the bank. Until they are replaced, he can only buy things with cash. Is the Bank of England proposing to eliminate crime before it eliminates cash?
Everyone should have a backup debit or credit card they keep at home.
It free to setup a card with most of the AltBanks - Revolut, Monzo etc
They offer one shot virtual cards as well, for online safety.
If completely compromised you can cancel the card in seconds, get a new number from issuer and add the new card to ApplePay etc on your phone without waiting for the new physical card.
You simply transfer spending money onto the card, and don’t use your main cards.
8C and leaden skies in the rugged Primrose Hill borderlands
UGH
Quite sunny and 15° in Leicester.
Apparently the Western Isles are bathed in fine sunshine! - 18C and cloudless skies in Portreee, Skye, today
The weather map has been inverted
So far this has been one of the nastier springs I can remember. A decidedly wet, dull March - worst for forty years, is being followed by a cold grey April. It's a bit like the endless winter that was lockdown 3 in early 2021
Tho I did manage to get 9 weeks in southeast Asia from Jan to March this winter, so maybe I should wheesht ma groaning
"Haud yer wheesht" is the correct terminology. But far better to leave this to the professionals.
(hwiːʃ ) or wheesht (hwiːʃt ) Scottish. exclamation. 1. a plea or demand for silence; hush. verb.
Yes. As in "wheesht!" = shut up. I've never seen it employed as a transitive verb though. "Haud yer wheesht" is the phrase usually used. Against stiff competition I would say that innapropriate use of Scottish terminology is your most annoying habit!
2. tr. To silence, to cause to be quiet, to hush, quieten (Sh., Cai., e. and wm.Sc. 1974). Also in n.Eng. dial. To wheesh up, to hush up, conceal by silence.
Wgt. 1804 R. Couper Poetry II. 11: A weel claw'd luif whishts the harangue.
Abd. 1868 W. Shelley Wayside Flowers 58: As dream-fleyed bairnies, left their lanes, At mither's hame-come whisht their greet.
Sc. 1897 C. M. Campbell Deilie Jock iv.: Wheesht your gab, if ye donna want me to throttle ye!
Slk. 1915 H. J. C. Clippings from Clayboddie (1921) 124: The third morning it [alarm clock] merely wheeshes them to a little more sleep.
Gall. 1932 A. McCormick Galloway 171: He offert me a sovran to wheesh it up.
wm.Sc. 1952 Gsw. Ballad Club V. 19: The gloaming wheeshts the yowes to sleep.
Sh. 1955 New Shetlander No. 41. 14: At lang last Magnie got him wheestit doon.
8C and leaden skies in the rugged Primrose Hill borderlands
UGH
Quite sunny and 15° in Leicester.
Apparently the Western Isles are bathed in fine sunshine! - 18C and cloudless skies in Portreee, Skye, today
The weather map has been inverted
So far this has been one of the nastier springs I can remember. A decidedly wet, dull March - worst for forty years, is being followed by a cold grey April. It's a bit like the endless winter that was lockdown 3 in early 2021
Tho I did manage to get 9 weeks in southeast Asia from Jan to March this winter, so maybe I should wheesht ma groaning
"Haud yer wheesht" is the correct terminology. But far better to leave this to the professionals.
(hwiːʃ ) or wheesht (hwiːʃt ) Scottish. exclamation. 1. a plea or demand for silence; hush. verb.
Yes. As in "wheesht!" = shut up. I've never seen it employed as a transitive verb though. "Haud yer wheesht" is the phrase usually used. Against stiff competition I would say that innapropriate use of Scottish terminology is your most annoying habit!
Also, you are categorically wrong
Indeed. You have a number of more annoying habits.
But there must now be a significant proportion of the Yes vote in 2014 thinking that if independence had happened in 2014, the current clown troupe would have trashed Scotland.
Independence still maybe - but with some serious intellectual heft first. Those able to make a case for how Scotland responds to issues like currency, pensions, head of state - they seem to be in awfully short supply.
This might be an interesting time for Sunak to set up a Royal Commission into Scottish independence, to examine in forensic detail exactly how Scotland might look post independence - and the difficult choices the Scots (and rUK) might have to make.
The SNP have got away with forcing the case in an in intellectual vacuum.
You could have at least corrected the typo. But good stuff, admitting that the case for the Union has been an intellectual vacuum is startlingly honest.
Trying to look smug, you just look like a place on Orkney.
There is a very good reason independence failed. And you are the epitome.
Despite your portentous 'insights', fuck all to do with you either way of course.
Typical offensive posting from you. There is never anything else.
This is a betting site. My portentous "insights" were in line with the SNP losing the referendum.
Badly.
I hope you bet accordingly.
The catastrofuck that is the SNP As Of This Moment seems to have robbed @Theuniondivvie of his trenchant wit, leaving behind only the pungent bile. It is a sad and unpretty spectacle
I could never match ‘Shut up, you paedo’ or ‘intern all Muslims now’ in the wit stakes.
Seems odd that the incontrovertible truth that the future of Scotland has fuck all to do with tourist class lads like yourself and the doyenne of the doorstep & crap Harry & Megs scoops should be characterised as pungent bile. Is there a sweeter way to sugar that pill that you’d prefer?
There you go again. The words are still there, but you now seem incapable of using them with any dexterity or humour, and in your desperation you strain for effect and approach total unintelligibility. Like a bran damaged boxer mistakenly punching the cat
But there must now be a significant proportion of the Yes vote in 2014 thinking that if independence had happened in 2014, the current clown troupe would have trashed Scotland.
Independence still maybe - but with some serious intellectual heft first. Those able to make a case for how Scotland responds to issues like currency, pensions, head of state - they seem to be in awfully short supply.
This might be an interesting time for Sunak to set up a Royal Commission into Scottish independence, to examine in forensic detail exactly how Scotland might look post independence - and the difficult choices the Scots (and rUK) might have to make.
The SNP have got away with forcing the case in an in intellectual vacuum.
You could have at least corrected the typo. But good stuff, admitting that the case for the Union has been an intellectual vacuum is startlingly honest.
Trying to look smug, you just look like a place on Orkney.
There is a very good reason independence failed. And you are the epitome.
Despite your portentous 'insights', fuck all to do with you either way of course.
Typical offensive posting from you. There is never anything else.
This is a betting site. My portentous "insights" were in line with the SNP losing the referendum.
Badly.
I hope you bet accordingly.
The catastrofuck that is the SNP As Of This Moment seems to have robbed @Theuniondivvie of his trenchant wit, leaving behind only the pungent bile. It is a sad and unpretty spectacle
I could never match ‘Shut up, you paedo’ or ‘intern all Muslims now’ in the wit stakes.
Seems odd that the incontrovertible truth that the future of Scotland has fuck all to do with tourist class lads like yourself and the doyenne of the doorstep & crap Harry & Megs scoops should be characterised as pungent bile. Is there a sweeter way to sugar that pill that you’d prefer?
There you go again. The words are still there, but you now seem incapable of using them with any dexterity or humour, and in your desperation you strain for effect and approach total unintelligibility. Like a bran damaged boxer mistakenly punching the cat
8C and leaden skies in the rugged Primrose Hill borderlands
UGH
Quite sunny and 15° in Leicester.
Apparently the Western Isles are bathed in fine sunshine! - 18C and cloudless skies in Portreee, Skye, today
The weather map has been inverted
So far this has been one of the nastier springs I can remember. A decidedly wet, dull March - worst for forty years, is being followed by a cold grey April. It's a bit like the endless winter that was lockdown 3 in early 2021
Tho I did manage to get 9 weeks in southeast Asia from Jan to March this winter, so maybe I should wheesht ma groaning
"Haud yer wheesht" is the correct terminology. But far better to leave this to the professionals.
(hwiːʃ ) or wheesht (hwiːʃt ) Scottish. exclamation. 1. a plea or demand for silence; hush. verb.
Yes. As in "wheesht!" = shut up. I've never seen it employed as a transitive verb though. "Haud yer wheesht" is the phrase usually used. Against stiff competition I would say that innapropriate use of Scottish terminology is your most annoying habit!
2. tr. To silence, to cause to be quiet, to hush, quieten (Sh., Cai., e. and wm.Sc. 1974). Also in n.Eng. dial. To wheesh up, to hush up, conceal by silence.
Wgt. 1804 R. Couper Poetry II. 11: A weel claw'd luif whishts the harangue.
Abd. 1868 W. Shelley Wayside Flowers 58: As dream-fleyed bairnies, left their lanes, At mither's hame-come whisht their greet.
Sc. 1897 C. M. Campbell Deilie Jock iv.: Wheesht your gab, if ye donna want me to throttle ye!
Slk. 1915 H. J. C. Clippings from Clayboddie (1921) 124: The third morning it [alarm clock] merely wheeshes them to a little more sleep.
Gall. 1932 A. McCormick Galloway 171: He offert me a sovran to wheesh it up.
wm.Sc. 1952 Gsw. Ballad Club V. 19: The gloaming wheeshts the yowes to sleep.
Sh. 1955 New Shetlander No. 41. 14: At lang last Magnie got him wheestit doon.
What is the Scots language translation for "Financial irregularities"?
8C and leaden skies in the rugged Primrose Hill borderlands
UGH
Quite sunny and 15° in Leicester.
Apparently the Western Isles are bathed in fine sunshine! - 18C and cloudless skies in Portreee, Skye, today
The weather map has been inverted
So far this has been one of the nastier springs I can remember. A decidedly wet, dull March - worst for forty years, is being followed by a cold grey April. It's a bit like the endless winter that was lockdown 3 in early 2021
Tho I did manage to get 9 weeks in southeast Asia from Jan to March this winter, so maybe I should wheesht ma groaning
"Haud yer wheesht" is the correct terminology. But far better to leave this to the professionals.
(hwiːʃ ) or wheesht (hwiːʃt ) Scottish. exclamation. 1. a plea or demand for silence; hush. verb.
Yes. As in "wheesht!" = shut up. I've never seen it employed as a transitive verb though. "Haud yer wheesht" is the phrase usually used. Against stiff competition I would say that innapropriate use of Scottish terminology is your most annoying habit!
Also, you are categorically wrong
Indeed. You have a number of more annoying habits.
I should jolly well hope so
After a life like mine, and with a character to match, if the "most annoying thing I can do" is supposedly use Scots words incorrectly, then something is badly fankled
Tho in reality I used the word entirely correctly. It can be transitive, intransitive or a noun
And now I shall hie myself to yon gymnasium for a braw mickle of dook
But there must now be a significant proportion of the Yes vote in 2014 thinking that if independence had happened in 2014, the current clown troupe would have trashed Scotland.
Independence still maybe - but with some serious intellectual heft first. Those able to make a case for how Scotland responds to issues like currency, pensions, head of state - they seem to be in awfully short supply.
This might be an interesting time for Sunak to set up a Royal Commission into Scottish independence, to examine in forensic detail exactly how Scotland might look post independence - and the difficult choices the Scots (and rUK) might have to make.
The SNP have got away with forcing the case in an in intellectual vacuum.
You could have at least corrected the typo. But good stuff, admitting that the case for the Union has been an intellectual vacuum is startlingly honest.
Trying to look smug, you just look like a place on Orkney.
There is a very good reason independence failed. And you are the epitome.
Despite your portentous 'insights', fuck all to do with you either way of course.
Typical offensive posting from you. There is never anything else.
This is a betting site. My portentous "insights" were in line with the SNP losing the referendum.
Badly.
I hope you bet accordingly.
The catastrofuck that is the SNP As Of This Moment seems to have robbed @Theuniondivvie of his trenchant wit, leaving behind only the pungent bile. It is a sad and unpretty spectacle
I could never match ‘Shut up, you paedo’ or ‘intern all Muslims now’ in the wit stakes.
Seems odd that the incontrovertible truth that the future of Scotland has fuck all to do with tourist class lads like yourself and the doyenne of the doorstep & crap Harry & Megs scoops should be characterised as pungent bile. Is there a sweeter way to sugar that pill that you’d prefer?
There you go again. The words are still there, but you now seem incapable of using them with any dexterity or humour, and in your desperation you strain for effect and approach total unintelligibility. Like a bran damaged boxer mistakenly punching the cat
Terrible what too much bran can do to a man.
Only for those of low moral fibre.
Does it make you regular, while financially irregular?
Developments in the Georgia fake electors law case.
NEW filing in Georgia election interference probe - DA Fani Willis seeking to DQ an attorney for 10 of the GOP fake electors, citing interviews *last week* where some electors pointed fingers at another for violating law among other things. #gapol https://mobile.twitter.com/stphnfwlr/status/1648377840847536142
If true, this is serious misconduct by their attorney. https://mobile.twitter.com/stphnfwlr/status/1648379258341933071 Also, the DA's office says that some of the 10 fake electors that Kimberly Debrow represents said they were never offered potential immunity, despite co-counsel telling the court none of them were interested.
"In its fight against the $1.6 billion defamation lawsuit brought by Dominion Voting Systems, Fox News has shifted its strategy to blaming former President Donald Trump, Newsweek reported." https://twitter.com/RealNoraC/status/1648365881334939655
“A big orange man did it and ran away.”
They’ve also submitted a Simpsons clip as part of the defence filing.
I don't know what I'd do if Fox News went down the pan. Celebration definitely in order just a matter of how big of a one. Can hardly think of a happier event apart from having a baby.
The immediate reaction from the few Ukrainians I know to Macron is "get fucked". This episode from him is making a lot of enemies across Eastern Europe for France and I'm not sure to what end, given that any peace plan will involve the US. It's almost as if he's got a whole load of domestic issues and he's desperately attempting to change the narrative. Selling out Ukraine and Eastern Europe to Russia is clearly a small price for a bit of media coverage that isn't completely dreadful.
8C and leaden skies in the rugged Primrose Hill borderlands
UGH
Quite sunny and 15° in Leicester.
A pleasant sunny evening in home of LEGO, Billund, where I’ve just landed.
In a lifetime of weirdness, one of the weirdest experiences of my life took place in Billund, Denmark
It was the annual meeting of the Scandinavian children of the Lebensborn, the children produced by the Nazi programme of eugenic breeding between fine SS men and perfect female Aryan specimens of womanhood
Little known fact: one of the women from Abba - the brunette - is one of the Lebensborn kids
It was late winter and the Lebensborn society had chosen the Danish Lego HQ and theme park as the location for their meeting - in winter it is deserted (maybe shuttered) so I presume it made financial sense and also has that helpful airport
I was writing for the gazette and my job was to listen to these wrenching stories and at one point I realised I was listening to a woman explain how her father was a notorious SS sadist who was lynched at the end of the war, and how her mother committed suicide years later out of guilt for going along with this Satanic breeding programme, and as she spoke, and wept, I looked up from my notebook and realised that right behind her was a massive Lego pirate ship complete with full size Lego pirates with Lego swords and Lego wooden legs and Lego bottles of rum and even a Lego pirate dog
8C and leaden skies in the rugged Primrose Hill borderlands
UGH
Quite sunny and 15° in Leicester.
A pleasant sunny evening in home of LEGO, Billund, where I’ve just landed.
In a lifetime of weirdness, one of the weirdest experiences of my life took place in Billund, Denmark
It was the annual meeting of the Scandinavian children of the Lebensborn, the children produced by the Nazi programme of eugenic breeding between fine SS men and perfect female Aryan specimens of womanhood
Little known fact: one of the women from Abba - the brunette - is one of the Lebensborn kids
It was late winter and the Lebensborn society had chosen the Danish Lego HQ and theme park as the location for their meeting - in winter it is deserted (maybe shuttered) so I presume it made financial sense and also has that helpful airport
I was writing for the gazette and my job was to listen to these wrenching stories and at one point I realised I was listening to a woman explain how her father was a notorious SS sadist who was lynched at the end of the war, and how her mother committed suicide years later out of guilt for going along with this Satanic breeding programme, and as she spoke, and wept, I looked up from my notebook and realised that right behind her was a massive Lego pirate ship complete with full size Lego pirates with Lego swords and Lego wooden legs and Lego bottles of rum and even a Lego pirate dog
8C and leaden skies in the rugged Primrose Hill borderlands
UGH
Quite sunny and 15° in Leicester.
Apparently the Western Isles are bathed in fine sunshine! - 18C and cloudless skies in Portreee, Skye, today
The weather map has been inverted
So far this has been one of the nastier springs I can remember. A decidedly wet, dull March - worst for forty years, is being followed by a cold grey April. It's a bit like the endless winter that was lockdown 3 in early 2021
Tho I did manage to get 9 weeks in southeast Asia from Jan to March this winter, so maybe I should wheesht ma groaning
"Haud yer wheesht" is the correct terminology. But far better to leave this to the professionals.
(hwiːʃ ) or wheesht (hwiːʃt ) Scottish. exclamation. 1. a plea or demand for silence; hush. verb.
Yes. As in "wheesht!" = shut up. I've never seen it employed as a transitive verb though. "Haud yer wheesht" is the phrase usually used. Against stiff competition I would say that innapropriate use of Scottish terminology is your most annoying habit!
Incredibly stiff competition but I'm going to have to disagree.
Constantly saying the Spectator is "intellectually high powered".
This makes me grind my teeth and sometimes even log off.
The immediate reaction from the few Ukrainians I know to Macron is "get fucked". This episode from him is making a lot of enemies across Eastern Europe for France and I'm not sure to what end, given that any peace plan will involve the US. It's almost as if he's got a whole load of domestic issues and he's desperately attempting to change the narrative. Selling out Ukraine and Eastern Europe to Russia is clearly a small price for a bit of media coverage that isn't completely dreadful.
Polish-French relations are terrible at the moment as well. France and Germany are struggling to adjust to the rising wealth and power of Eastern Europe.
The immediate reaction from the few Ukrainians I know to Macron is "get fucked". This episode from him is making a lot of enemies across Eastern Europe for France and I'm not sure to what end, given that any peace plan will involve the US. It's almost as if he's got a whole load of domestic issues and he's desperately attempting to change the narrative. Selling out Ukraine and Eastern Europe to Russia is clearly a small price for a bit of media coverage that isn't completely dreadful.
I”m not clear why British police should be taking an interest in a French political dispute. The use of anti-terrorism legislation for something that pretty obviously isn’t does not look good.
I can't help but notice that yesterday's R&W poll (Labour lead 12, Tories on 32) got a lot more attention on here than today's You Gov (Labour lead 18, Tories on 27). Baffling.
Meanwhile, it's bloody freezing down here on the south coast, and we're thinking of moving to Scotland.
8C and leaden skies in the rugged Primrose Hill borderlands
UGH
Do you need a new thermometer or is 8 the overnight low?
That's what it is now in NW1. 8C with a chilly wind, so it feels considerably colder. Not a peep of sun. Grim
This is partly a result of the SSW earlier in the year (similar to 2013). It will pass.
If you join us meteorological types over on Netweather you'll see there's a bit more to it than just the Final Warming. Mid April to Mid May is the period where east or north east winds are most likely - the Atlantic is moribund and pressure is often higher to the north (Greenland or Scandinavia).
Currently, a large anticyclone is over Scandinavia and it's moving slowly but steadily west north west towards Greenland (the term is retrogression). This is essentially what happened in the infamous "Beast from the East" spell in 2018. Once the anticyclone departs pressure falls over Scandinavia and we get a north or north east regime set up so it's cold followed by more cold (were this January we'd be looking at frost and snow and daytime temperatures struggling to get above freezing).
I can't help but notice that yesterday's R&W poll (Labour lead 12, Tories on 32) got a lot more attention on here than today's You Gov (Labour lead 18, Tories on 27). Baffling.
Meanwhile, it's bloody freezing down here on the south coast, and we're thinking of moving to Scotland.
I’m now in north France; it was quite warm this afternoon but the temperature dropped rapidly this evening.
Still, one piece of good news, the motorway we built directly to the end of the Channel Tunnel is now open for driving, rather than for lorry parking like last year.
Question: "How many votes did Tony Blair receive in the Sedgefield constituency at the 1997 UK general election?"
Answer: "Tony Blair, who was the leader of the Labour Party at the time, stood for election in the Sedgefield constituency at the 1997 UK general election. The result of the election in Sedgefield was as follows:
Tony Blair (Labour Party) - 34,333 votes (71.6%) Tim Garden (Conservative Party) - 8,817 votes (18.4%) Alex White (Liberal Democrats) - 3,065 votes (6.4%) Others - 1,297 votes (2.7%)"
Question: "How many votes did Tony Blair receive in the Sedgefield constituency at the 1997 UK general election?"
Answer: "Tony Blair, who was the leader of the Labour Party at the time, stood for election in the Sedgefield constituency at the 1997 UK general election. The result of the election in Sedgefield was as follows:
Tony Blair (Labour Party) - 34,333 votes (71.6%) Tim Garden (Conservative Party) - 8,817 votes (18.4%) Alex White (Liberal Democrats) - 3,065 votes (6.4%) Others - 1,297 votes (2.7%)"
8C and leaden skies in the rugged Primrose Hill borderlands
UGH
Quite sunny and 15° in Leicester.
Apparently the Western Isles are bathed in fine sunshine! - 18C and cloudless skies in Portreee, Skye, today
The weather map has been inverted
So far this has been one of the nastier springs I can remember. A decidedly wet, dull March - worst for forty years, is being followed by a cold grey April. It's a bit like the endless winter that was lockdown 3 in early 2021
Tho I did manage to get 9 weeks in southeast Asia from Jan to March this winter, so maybe I should wheesht ma groaning
"Haud yer wheesht" is the correct terminology. But far better to leave this to the professionals.
(hwiːʃ ) or wheesht (hwiːʃt ) Scottish. exclamation. 1. a plea or demand for silence; hush. verb.
Yes. As in "wheesht!" = shut up. I've never seen it employed as a transitive verb though. "Haud yer wheesht" is the phrase usually used. Against stiff competition I would say that innapropriate use of Scottish terminology is your most annoying habit!
Incredibly stiff competition but I'm going to have to disagree.
Constantly saying the Spectator is "intellectually high powered".
This makes me grind my teeth and sometimes even log off.
I guess it's just possible that the poster who says that about the Spectator has some sort of personal interest in that publication? Can't think of any other explanation.
I'm selling my flat and will likely have a fair chunk of cash that will essentially sit idle for a while. Could anyone suggest routes for that cash that avoid bank/system risk? I had hoped to just invest directly in gilts, but I can't see a 100% route of doing that. It seems that you have to go via 'computershare'.
I have most of my investments with Hargreaves Lansdowne, and they're great, but I don't want to have all of my eggs in one basket.
It doesn't have to be Gilts - could be UST or ECB bonds. Not interested in Gold or the like.
Question: "How many votes did Tony Blair receive in the Sedgefield constituency at the 1997 UK general election?"
Answer: "Tony Blair, who was the leader of the Labour Party at the time, stood for election in the Sedgefield constituency at the 1997 UK general election. The result of the election in Sedgefield was as follows:
Tony Blair (Labour Party) - 34,333 votes (71.6%) Tim Garden (Conservative Party) - 8,817 votes (18.4%) Alex White (Liberal Democrats) - 3,065 votes (6.4%) Others - 1,297 votes (2.7%)"
Question: "How many votes did Tony Blair receive in the Sedgefield constituency at the 1997 UK general election?"
Answer: "Tony Blair, who was the leader of the Labour Party at the time, stood for election in the Sedgefield constituency at the 1997 UK general election. The result of the election in Sedgefield was as follows:
Tony Blair (Labour Party) - 34,333 votes (71.6%) Tim Garden (Conservative Party) - 8,817 votes (18.4%) Alex White (Liberal Democrats) - 3,065 votes (6.4%) Others - 1,297 votes (2.7%)"
This is about as interesting as someone going through the entire internet and posting every page that is wrong.
It highlights the point made in that very useful article linked here a few weeks ago, that it is better to think of ChatGPT as a powerful search engine that will pull up text most closely linked to the text you feed it. Which means that it is easily fooled, if you feed it text likely to pull up incorrect data.
The classic example given in that article was asking it which weighs more, a pound of metal or two pounds of feathers. Because that is such a well known and oft quoted trick question with one pound of each material, it will tell you that one pound of stuff weighs the same as two pounds of another stuff. Which is an idiot mistake most young children would dodge.
Only naive believers like our Leon are fooled into thinking that it understands or ‘thinks’ about the text it is retrieving in any meaningful way.
Question: "How many votes did Tony Blair receive in the Sedgefield constituency at the 1997 UK general election?"
Answer: "Tony Blair, who was the leader of the Labour Party at the time, stood for election in the Sedgefield constituency at the 1997 UK general election. The result of the election in Sedgefield was as follows:
Tony Blair (Labour Party) - 34,333 votes (71.6%) Tim Garden (Conservative Party) - 8,817 votes (18.4%) Alex White (Liberal Democrats) - 3,065 votes (6.4%) Others - 1,297 votes (2.7%)"
Question: "How many votes did Tony Blair receive in the Sedgefield constituency at the 1997 UK general election?"
Answer: "Tony Blair, who was the leader of the Labour Party at the time, stood for election in the Sedgefield constituency at the 1997 UK general election. The result of the election in Sedgefield was as follows:
Tony Blair (Labour Party) - 34,333 votes (71.6%) Tim Garden (Conservative Party) - 8,817 votes (18.4%) Alex White (Liberal Democrats) - 3,065 votes (6.4%) Others - 1,297 votes (2.7%)"
This is about as interesting as someone going through the entire internet and posting every page that is wrong.
It highlights the point made in that very useful article linked here a few weeks ago, that it is better to think of ChatGPT as a powerful search engine that will pull up text most closely linked to the text you feed it. Which means that it is easily fooled, if you feed it text likely to pull up incorrect data.
Only naive believers like our Leon are fooled into thinking that it understands or thinks about the text it is retrieving in any meaningful way.
But it’s not pulling up incorrect data here. Those incorrect numbers won’t exist anywhere online. One shouldn’t think of it as a powerful search engine for this very reason: that it doesn’t simply pull up data, it generates text. And for these sorts of questions, it does a bad job of it and confabulates.
8C and leaden skies in the rugged Primrose Hill borderlands
UGH
Quite sunny and 15° in Leicester.
Apparently the Western Isles are bathed in fine sunshine! - 18C and cloudless skies in Portreee, Skye, today
The weather map has been inverted
So far this has been one of the nastier springs I can remember. A decidedly wet, dull March - worst for forty years, is being followed by a cold grey April. It's a bit like the endless winter that was lockdown 3 in early 2021
Tho I did manage to get 9 weeks in southeast Asia from Jan to March this winter, so maybe I should wheesht ma groaning
"Haud yer wheesht" is the correct terminology. But far better to leave this to the professionals.
(hwiːʃ ) or wheesht (hwiːʃt ) Scottish. exclamation. 1. a plea or demand for silence; hush. verb.
Yes. As in "wheesht!" = shut up. I've never seen it employed as a transitive verb though. "Haud yer wheesht" is the phrase usually used. Against stiff competition I would say that innapropriate use of Scottish terminology is your most annoying habit!
Incredibly stiff competition but I'm going to have to disagree.
Constantly saying the Spectator is "intellectually high powered".
This makes me grind my teeth and sometimes even log off.
I guess it's just possible that the poster who says that about the Spectator has some sort of personal interest in that publication? Can't think of any other explanation.
Just basic admiration. It’s the oldest weekly magazine in the world. And one of the most prestigious political magazines on the planet. Scratch a journalist and you’ll find someone who, at some point, wants to write for the Spectator, just for the prestige. I can only wish, from my humble post on the gazette
More variable polling today - Deltapoll shows a sharp fall in Labour support but not all of that translating directly to the Conservatives. Indeed, it's a curiousity as the published numbers from the last poll rounded up to 101% and the numbers from this are down to 99%.
YouGov hardly changed - Labour up a point and the lead back to 18 in a week which sees Labour's leads ranging from 12 (Redfield & Wilton) to 23 (Omnisis).
Tonight's R&W Red Wall polling doesn't show a lot of change with the swing from Conservative to Labour 12.5% in these constituencies (last night's national swing was 11%)
Question: "How many votes did Tony Blair receive in the Sedgefield constituency at the 1997 UK general election?"
Answer: "Tony Blair, who was the leader of the Labour Party at the time, stood for election in the Sedgefield constituency at the 1997 UK general election. The result of the election in Sedgefield was as follows:
Tony Blair (Labour Party) - 34,333 votes (71.6%) Tim Garden (Conservative Party) - 8,817 votes (18.4%) Alex White (Liberal Democrats) - 3,065 votes (6.4%) Others - 1,297 votes (2.7%)"
This is about as interesting as someone going through the entire internet and posting every page that is wrong.
It highlights the point made in that very useful article linked here a few weeks ago, that it is better to think of ChatGPT as a powerful search engine that will pull up text most closely linked to the text you feed it. Which means that it is easily fooled, if you feed it text likely to pull up incorrect data.
Only naive believers like our Leon are fooled into thinking that it understands or thinks about the text it is retrieving in any meaningful way.
But it’s not pulling up incorrect data here. Those incorrect numbers won’t exist anywhere online. One shouldn’t think of it as a powerful search engine for this very reason: that it doesn’t simply pull up data, it generates text. And for these sorts of questions, it does a bad job of it and confabulates.
Yes, FP, how it gets to the wrong data in that example is puzzling. But it must have pulled it from somewhere; it doesn’t just make up the numbers.
8C and leaden skies in the rugged Primrose Hill borderlands
UGH
Quite sunny and 15° in Leicester.
Apparently the Western Isles are bathed in fine sunshine! - 18C and cloudless skies in Portreee, Skye, today
The weather map has been inverted
So far this has been one of the nastier springs I can remember. A decidedly wet, dull March - worst for forty years, is being followed by a cold grey April. It's a bit like the endless winter that was lockdown 3 in early 2021
Tho I did manage to get 9 weeks in southeast Asia from Jan to March this winter, so maybe I should wheesht ma groaning
"Haud yer wheesht" is the correct terminology. But far better to leave this to the professionals.
(hwiːʃ ) or wheesht (hwiːʃt ) Scottish. exclamation. 1. a plea or demand for silence; hush. verb.
Yes. As in "wheesht!" = shut up. I've never seen it employed as a transitive verb though. "Haud yer wheesht" is the phrase usually used. Against stiff competition I would say that innapropriate use of Scottish terminology is your most annoying habit!
Incredibly stiff competition but I'm going to have to disagree.
Constantly saying the Spectator is "intellectually high powered".
This makes me grind my teeth and sometimes even log off.
I guess it's just possible that the poster who says that about the Spectator has some sort of personal interest in that publication? Can't think of any other explanation.
Just basic admiration. It’s the oldest weekly magazine in the world. And one of the most prestigious political magazines on the planet. Scratch a journalist and you’ll find someone who, at some point, wants to write for the Spectator, just for the prestige. I can only wish, from my humble post on the gazette
Their list of contributors is insane
Surprised you rose to the bait. Most of the luminaries in your list are deceased, ex-contributors, surely?
Question: "How many votes did Tony Blair receive in the Sedgefield constituency at the 1997 UK general election?"
Answer: "Tony Blair, who was the leader of the Labour Party at the time, stood for election in the Sedgefield constituency at the 1997 UK general election. The result of the election in Sedgefield was as follows:
Tony Blair (Labour Party) - 34,333 votes (71.6%) Tim Garden (Conservative Party) - 8,817 votes (18.4%) Alex White (Liberal Democrats) - 3,065 votes (6.4%) Others - 1,297 votes (2.7%)"
This is about as interesting as someone going through the entire internet and posting every page that is wrong.
There is something intriguing though. With my teacher hat on, wrong answers are much more revealing ("where did they get that from?") than correct ones.
There was a Baron Timothy Garden who was a Lib Dem peer, but no Conservative candidate I can find. My other guess is a mashup of two of the three Goodies.
Question: "How many votes did Tony Blair receive in the Sedgefield constituency at the 1997 UK general election?"
Answer: "Tony Blair, who was the leader of the Labour Party at the time, stood for election in the Sedgefield constituency at the 1997 UK general election. The result of the election in Sedgefield was as follows:
Tony Blair (Labour Party) - 34,333 votes (71.6%) Tim Garden (Conservative Party) - 8,817 votes (18.4%) Alex White (Liberal Democrats) - 3,065 votes (6.4%) Others - 1,297 votes (2.7%)"
This is about as interesting as someone going through the entire internet and posting every page that is wrong.
It highlights the point made in that very useful article linked here a few weeks ago, that it is better to think of ChatGPT as a powerful search engine that will pull up text most closely linked to the text you feed it. Which means that it is easily fooled, if you feed it text likely to pull up incorrect data.
Only naive believers like our Leon are fooled into thinking that it understands or thinks about the text it is retrieving in any meaningful way.
But it’s not pulling up incorrect data here. Those incorrect numbers won’t exist anywhere online. One shouldn’t think of it as a powerful search engine for this very reason: that it doesn’t simply pull up data, it generates text. And for these sorts of questions, it does a bad job of it and confabulates.
Yes, FP, how it gets to the wrong data in that example is puzzling. But it must have pulled it from somewhere; it doesn’t just make up the numbers.
It does just make up the numbers. It doesn’t know what numbers are. It generates text. It makes up text. Numbers are just text to it. Those numbers are plausible text at that point, as far as the LLM concerned.
But there must now be a significant proportion of the Yes vote in 2014 thinking that if independence had happened in 2014, the current clown troupe would have trashed Scotland.
Independence still maybe - but with some serious intellectual heft first. Those able to make a case for how Scotland responds to issues like currency, pensions, head of state - they seem to be in awfully short supply.
This might be an interesting time for Sunak to set up a Royal Commission into Scottish independence, to examine in forensic detail exactly how Scotland might look post independence - and the difficult choices the Scots (and rUK) might have to make.
The SNP have got away with forcing the case in an in intellectual vacuum.
You could have at least corrected the typo. But good stuff, admitting that the case for the Union has been an intellectual vacuum is startlingly honest.
Trying to look smug, you just look like a place on Orkney.
There is a very good reason independence failed. And you are the epitome.
Despite your portentous 'insights', fuck all to do with you either way of course.
Typical offensive posting from you. There is never anything else.
This is a betting site. My portentous "insights" were in line with the SNP losing the referendum.
Badly.
I hope you bet accordingly.
The catastrofuck that is the SNP As Of This Moment seems to have robbed @Theuniondivvie of his trenchant wit, leaving behind only the pungent bile. It is a sad and unpretty spectacle
I could never match ‘Shut up, you paedo’ or ‘intern all Muslims now’ in the wit stakes.
Seems odd that the incontrovertible truth that the future of Scotland has fuck all to do with tourist class lads like yourself and the doyenne of the doorstep & crap Harry & Megs scoops should be characterised as pungent bile. Is there a sweeter way to sugar that pill that you’d prefer?
I'm married to a Scot. Most of my holidays in recent years have been taken in Scotland. I worked for Chevron, the company that made the Ninian platform there, the largest object ever moved by man, to extract a billion barrels of oil in UK waters. Employing a vast army of construction staff.
What da fuck have YOU ever done for Scotland - other than shill for a clown troupe of self-interested hustlers who would have taken a fine people down the pan.
I'm selling my flat and will likely have a fair chunk of cash that will essentially sit idle for a while. Could anyone suggest routes for that cash that avoid bank/system risk? I had hoped to just invest directly in gilts, but I can't see a 100% route of doing that. It seems that you have to go via 'computershare'.
I have most of my investments with Hargreaves Lansdowne, and they're great, but I don't want to have all of my eggs in one basket.
It doesn't have to be Gilts - could be UST or ECB bonds. Not interested in Gold or the like.
I'd appreciate any thoughts.
The £85 000 limit goes up to £1 000 000 for 6 months for temporarily high deposits, such as real estate sales, so it's only if it is going to be sitting longer that you need to worry, it also gives you time to think:
8C and leaden skies in the rugged Primrose Hill borderlands
UGH
Quite sunny and 15° in Leicester.
Apparently the Western Isles are bathed in fine sunshine! - 18C and cloudless skies in Portreee, Skye, today
The weather map has been inverted
So far this has been one of the nastier springs I can remember. A decidedly wet, dull March - worst for forty years, is being followed by a cold grey April. It's a bit like the endless winter that was lockdown 3 in early 2021
Tho I did manage to get 9 weeks in southeast Asia from Jan to March this winter, so maybe I should wheesht ma groaning
"Haud yer wheesht" is the correct terminology. But far better to leave this to the professionals.
(hwiːʃ ) or wheesht (hwiːʃt ) Scottish. exclamation. 1. a plea or demand for silence; hush. verb.
Yes. As in "wheesht!" = shut up. I've never seen it employed as a transitive verb though. "Haud yer wheesht" is the phrase usually used. Against stiff competition I would say that innapropriate use of Scottish terminology is your most annoying habit!
Incredibly stiff competition but I'm going to have to disagree.
Constantly saying the Spectator is "intellectually high powered".
This makes me grind my teeth and sometimes even log off.
I guess it's just possible that the poster who says that about the Spectator has some sort of personal interest in that publication? Can't think of any other explanation.
Just basic admiration. It’s the oldest weekly magazine in the world. And one of the most prestigious political magazines on the planet. Scratch a journalist and you’ll find someone who, at some point, wants to write for the Spectator, just for the prestige. I can only wish, from my humble post on the gazette
Their list of contributors is insane
Surprised you rose to the bait. Most of the luminaries in your list are deceased, ex-contributors, surely?
I like the way the Spectator REALLY annoys certain people, simply by being prestigious and successful
There is also a serious point here. It has been the most influential journal of the last 50 years in the UK simply by virtue of its major sway over the Tory party, who have governed Britain for most of that time. You can argue that this sway is a bad thing, you can’t deny it exists
And in two ex editors, Nigel Lawson and Boris Johnson, it changed the country and the western world
8C and leaden skies in the rugged Primrose Hill borderlands
UGH
Quite sunny and 15° in Leicester.
Apparently the Western Isles are bathed in fine sunshine! - 18C and cloudless skies in Portreee, Skye, today
The weather map has been inverted
So far this has been one of the nastier springs I can remember. A decidedly wet, dull March - worst for forty years, is being followed by a cold grey April. It's a bit like the endless winter that was lockdown 3 in early 2021
Tho I did manage to get 9 weeks in southeast Asia from Jan to March this winter, so maybe I should wheesht ma groaning
"Haud yer wheesht" is the correct terminology. But far better to leave this to the professionals.
(hwiːʃ ) or wheesht (hwiːʃt ) Scottish. exclamation. 1. a plea or demand for silence; hush. verb.
Yes. As in "wheesht!" = shut up. I've never seen it employed as a transitive verb though. "Haud yer wheesht" is the phrase usually used. Against stiff competition I would say that innapropriate use of Scottish terminology is your most annoying habit!
Incredibly stiff competition but I'm going to have to disagree.
Constantly saying the Spectator is "intellectually high powered".
This makes me grind my teeth and sometimes even log off.
I guess it's just possible that the poster who says that about the Spectator has some sort of personal interest in that publication? Can't think of any other explanation.
Just basic admiration. It’s the oldest weekly magazine in the world. And one of the most prestigious political magazines on the planet. Scratch a journalist and you’ll find someone who, at some point, wants to write for the Spectator, just for the prestige. I can only wish, from my humble post on the gazette
Their list of contributors is insane
Surprised you rose to the bait. Most of the luminaries in your list are deceased, ex-contributors, surely?
I like the way the Spectator REALLY annoys certain people, simply by being prestigious and successful
There is also a serious point here. It has been the most influential journal of the last 50 years in the UK simply by virtue of its major sway over the Tory party, who have governed Britain for most of that time. You can argue that this sway is a bad thing, you can’t deny it exists
And in two ex editors, Nigel Lawson and Boris Johnson, it changed the country and the western world
Enough about its flaws and weaknesses, is there anything on the positive side of the balance?
Question: "How many votes did Tony Blair receive in the Sedgefield constituency at the 1997 UK general election?"
Answer: "Tony Blair, who was the leader of the Labour Party at the time, stood for election in the Sedgefield constituency at the 1997 UK general election. The result of the election in Sedgefield was as follows:
Tony Blair (Labour Party) - 34,333 votes (71.6%) Tim Garden (Conservative Party) - 8,817 votes (18.4%) Alex White (Liberal Democrats) - 3,065 votes (6.4%) Others - 1,297 votes (2.7%)"
This is about as interesting as someone going through the entire internet and posting every page that is wrong.
There is something intriguing though. With my teacher hat on, wrong answers are much more revealing ("where did they get that from?") than correct ones.
There was a Baron Timothy Garden who was a Lib Dem peer, but no Conservative candidate I can find. My other guess is a mashup of two of the three Goodies.
There's an assumption that these sort of gaffes can be ironed out with some fine tuning. I have my doubts. This is probably just what the model does.
I can't help but notice that yesterday's R&W poll (Labour lead 12, Tories on 32) got a lot more attention on here than today's You Gov (Labour lead 18, Tories on 27). Baffling.
Meanwhile, it's bloody freezing down here on the south coast, and we're thinking of moving to Scotland.
How much attention is this getting?
Fascinating how those who were crowing about how effective those Labour attack posters had been are now so quiet.
8C and leaden skies in the rugged Primrose Hill borderlands
UGH
Quite sunny and 15° in Leicester.
Apparently the Western Isles are bathed in fine sunshine! - 18C and cloudless skies in Portreee, Skye, today
The weather map has been inverted
So far this has been one of the nastier springs I can remember. A decidedly wet, dull March - worst for forty years, is being followed by a cold grey April. It's a bit like the endless winter that was lockdown 3 in early 2021
Tho I did manage to get 9 weeks in southeast Asia from Jan to March this winter, so maybe I should wheesht ma groaning
"Haud yer wheesht" is the correct terminology. But far better to leave this to the professionals.
(hwiːʃ ) or wheesht (hwiːʃt ) Scottish. exclamation. 1. a plea or demand for silence; hush. verb.
Yes. As in "wheesht!" = shut up. I've never seen it employed as a transitive verb though. "Haud yer wheesht" is the phrase usually used. Against stiff competition I would say that innapropriate use of Scottish terminology is your most annoying habit!
Incredibly stiff competition but I'm going to have to disagree.
Constantly saying the Spectator is "intellectually high powered".
This makes me grind my teeth and sometimes even log off.
I guess it's just possible that the poster who says that about the Spectator has some sort of personal interest in that publication? Can't think of any other explanation.
Just basic admiration. It’s the oldest weekly magazine in the world. And one of the most prestigious political magazines on the planet. Scratch a journalist and you’ll find someone who, at some point, wants to write for the Spectator, just for the prestige. I can only wish, from my humble post on the gazette
Their list of contributors is insane
Surprised you rose to the bait. Most of the luminaries in your list are deceased, ex-contributors, surely?
I like the way the Spectator REALLY annoys certain people, simply by being prestigious and successful
There is also a serious point here. It has been the most influential journal of the last 50 years in the UK simply by virtue of its major sway over the Tory party, who have governed Britain for most of that time. You can argue that this sway is a bad thing, you can’t deny it exists
And in two ex editors, Nigel Lawson and Boris Johnson, it changed the country and the western world
I'm selling my flat and will likely have a fair chunk of cash that will essentially sit idle for a while. Could anyone suggest routes for that cash that avoid bank/system risk? I had hoped to just invest directly in gilts, but I can't see a 100% route of doing that. It seems that you have to go via 'computershare'.
I have most of my investments with Hargreaves Lansdowne, and they're great, but I don't want to have all of my eggs in one basket.
It doesn't have to be Gilts - could be UST or ECB bonds. Not interested in Gold or the like.
I'd appreciate any thoughts.
You can use HL's Active savings to split it up amongst several separately insured building societies. About 3% instant access, or you can lock it up for 3 months, 6 months, a year or more for about 4.5%:
Question: "How many votes did Tony Blair receive in the Sedgefield constituency at the 1997 UK general election?"
Answer: "Tony Blair, who was the leader of the Labour Party at the time, stood for election in the Sedgefield constituency at the 1997 UK general election. The result of the election in Sedgefield was as follows:
Tony Blair (Labour Party) - 34,333 votes (71.6%) Tim Garden (Conservative Party) - 8,817 votes (18.4%) Alex White (Liberal Democrats) - 3,065 votes (6.4%) Others - 1,297 votes (2.7%)"
8C and leaden skies in the rugged Primrose Hill borderlands
UGH
Quite sunny and 15° in Leicester.
Apparently the Western Isles are bathed in fine sunshine! - 18C and cloudless skies in Portreee, Skye, today
The weather map has been inverted
So far this has been one of the nastier springs I can remember. A decidedly wet, dull March - worst for forty years, is being followed by a cold grey April. It's a bit like the endless winter that was lockdown 3 in early 2021
Tho I did manage to get 9 weeks in southeast Asia from Jan to March this winter, so maybe I should wheesht ma groaning
"Haud yer wheesht" is the correct terminology. But far better to leave this to the professionals.
(hwiːʃ ) or wheesht (hwiːʃt ) Scottish. exclamation. 1. a plea or demand for silence; hush. verb.
Yes. As in "wheesht!" = shut up. I've never seen it employed as a transitive verb though. "Haud yer wheesht" is the phrase usually used. Against stiff competition I would say that innapropriate use of Scottish terminology is your most annoying habit!
2. tr. To silence, to cause to be quiet, to hush, quieten (Sh., Cai., e. and wm.Sc. 1974). Also in n.Eng. dial. To wheesh up, to hush up, conceal by silence.
Wgt. 1804 R. Couper Poetry II. 11: A weel claw'd luif whishts the harangue.
Abd. 1868 W. Shelley Wayside Flowers 58: As dream-fleyed bairnies, left their lanes, At mither's hame-come whisht their greet.
Sc. 1897 C. M. Campbell Deilie Jock iv.: Wheesht your gab, if ye donna want me to throttle ye!
Slk. 1915 H. J. C. Clippings from Clayboddie (1921) 124: The third morning it [alarm clock] merely wheeshes them to a little more sleep.
Gall. 1932 A. McCormick Galloway 171: He offert me a sovran to wheesh it up.
wm.Sc. 1952 Gsw. Ballad Club V. 19: The gloaming wheeshts the yowes to sleep.
Sh. 1955 New Shetlander No. 41. 14: At lang last Magnie got him wheestit doon.
What is the Scots language translation for "Financial irregularities"?
More variable polling today - Deltapoll shows a sharp fall in Labour support but not all of that translating directly to the Conservatives. Indeed, it's a curiousity as the published numbers from the last poll rounded up to 101% and the numbers from this are down to 99%.
YouGov hardly changed - Labour up a point and the lead back to 18 in a week which sees Labour's leads ranging from 12 (Redfield & Wilton) to 23 (Omnisis).
Tonight's R&W Red Wall polling doesn't show a lot of change with the swing from Conservative to Labour 12.5% in these constituencies (last night's national swing was 11%)
The trend is a slow and steady recovery of the Conservatives, whilst enthusiasm for Starmer has plateaued.
This has happened in the last 6 months. There are potentially over 18 months to go until the next General Election.
Senior figures within the SNP have complained that the arrest of the party treasurer — just hours before Humza Yousaf made a key speech to launch his time as first minister — “stinks”.
The SNP was thrown into more chaos when Colin Beattie, a senior member of the Scottish parliament, was taken into custody as part of Operation Branchform, an investigation into possible fundraising fraud.
It is the second high-profile arrest made by officers examining concerns that £600,000 raised by SNP supporters specifically to fund a second independence referendum campaign had “gone missing”
Eyebrows had already been raised by the high-profile nature of raids this month on the Glasgow home of Nicola Sturgeon, the former first minister, and Peter Murrell, her husband and the former SNP chief executive.
Some sources complained that the response, which included uniformed officers marching in and out of the party’s headquarters, close to the Scottish parliament in Edinburgh was “disproportionate”. Murrell was arrested and questioned for 11 hours before being released....
...A senior figure in the SNP told The Times: “There’s a whole load of people going to be really angry about this, this stinks, this day of all days, that Colin Beattie would be arrested. No one would ever think there was a problem with Colin Beattie.”
More variable polling today - Deltapoll shows a sharp fall in Labour support but not all of that translating directly to the Conservatives. Indeed, it's a curiousity as the published numbers from the last poll rounded up to 101% and the numbers from this are down to 99%.
YouGov hardly changed - Labour up a point and the lead back to 18 in a week which sees Labour's leads ranging from 12 (Redfield & Wilton) to 23 (Omnisis).
Tonight's R&W Red Wall polling doesn't show a lot of change with the swing from Conservative to Labour 12.5% in these constituencies (last night's national swing was 11%)
Figures:
"Redfield & Wilton Strategies @RedfieldWilton Labour leads by 16% in the Red Wall.
Red Wall VI (16 April):
Labour 47% (-2) Conservative 31% (+1) Reform UK 7% (-2) Liberal Democrat 7% (+1) Green 5% (+1) Plaid Cymru 1% (–) Other 2% (+1)
AChinese businessman linked to a “secret police station” in London has organised Tory fundraising dinners and been photographed with party leaders, The Times can reveal.
Ruiyou Lin, 40, runs a takeaway ordering platform in Croydon from an office address which hosts an alleged overseas Chinese police station.
The businessman has attended Chinese Communist Party (CCP) political conferences in China. He has also held roles in several organisations in Britain with links to the party department responsible for overseeing the United Front strategy of using Chinese nationals living abroad to push its interests.
At the same time, Lin developed contacts in the Conservative Party in Britain, serving as vice-chairman of a constituency Chinese group and rubbing shoulders with the former prime ministers Boris Johnson and Theresa May. He has denied working for China and said he had no interest in British or Chinese politics but attended events to meet potential investors.
Authorities in the West have expressed growing concern about China’s attempts to influence domestic politics in foreign nations. On Monday US prosecutors arrested two men in New York for allegedly operating a secret police station in Manhattan.
8C and leaden skies in the rugged Primrose Hill borderlands
UGH
Quite sunny and 15° in Leicester.
Apparently the Western Isles are bathed in fine sunshine! - 18C and cloudless skies in Portreee, Skye, today
The weather map has been inverted
So far this has been one of the nastier springs I can remember. A decidedly wet, dull March - worst for forty years, is being followed by a cold grey April. It's a bit like the endless winter that was lockdown 3 in early 2021
Tho I did manage to get 9 weeks in southeast Asia from Jan to March this winter, so maybe I should wheesht ma groaning
"Haud yer wheesht" is the correct terminology. But far better to leave this to the professionals.
(hwiːʃ ) or wheesht (hwiːʃt ) Scottish. exclamation. 1. a plea or demand for silence; hush. verb.
Yes. As in "wheesht!" = shut up. I've never seen it employed as a transitive verb though. "Haud yer wheesht" is the phrase usually used. Against stiff competition I would say that innapropriate use of Scottish terminology is your most annoying habit!
Incredibly stiff competition but I'm going to have to disagree.
Constantly saying the Spectator is "intellectually high powered".
This makes me grind my teeth and sometimes even log off.
That's because your response to any cogent intellectual argument from the other side is to just pompously dismiss them as a 'reactionary' and move on.
I suppose it's easier than dealing with the argument, though, and taxes the brain less.
I can't help but notice that yesterday's R&W poll (Labour lead 12, Tories on 32) got a lot more attention on here than today's You Gov (Labour lead 18, Tories on 27). Baffling.
Meanwhile, it's bloody freezing down here on the south coast, and we're thinking of moving to Scotland.
How much attention is this getting?
Fascinating how those who were crowing about how effective those Labour attack posters had been are now so quiet.
There's little doubt the coverage of the attack ads has damaged Labour in general and Starmer in particular but the real story in that graphic is the fall and rise of Rishi Sunak.
However, to assume either Sunak will continue to rise in popularity and Starmer will continue to fall or the popularity figures will accurately reflect voting intention would be foolish at this time.
But there must now be a significant proportion of the Yes vote in 2014 thinking that if independence had happened in 2014, the current clown troupe would have trashed Scotland.
Independence still maybe - but with some serious intellectual heft first. Those able to make a case for how Scotland responds to issues like currency, pensions, head of state - they seem to be in awfully short supply.
This might be an interesting time for Sunak to set up a Royal Commission into Scottish independence, to examine in forensic detail exactly how Scotland might look post independence - and the difficult choices the Scots (and rUK) might have to make.
The SNP have got away with forcing the case in an in intellectual vacuum.
You could have at least corrected the typo. But good stuff, admitting that the case for the Union has been an intellectual vacuum is startlingly honest.
Trying to look smug, you just look like a place on Orkney.
There is a very good reason independence failed. And you are the epitome.
Despite your portentous 'insights', fuck all to do with you either way of course.
Typical offensive posting from you. There is never anything else.
This is a betting site. My portentous "insights" were in line with the SNP losing the referendum.
Badly.
I hope you bet accordingly.
The catastrofuck that is the SNP As Of This Moment seems to have robbed @Theuniondivvie of his trenchant wit, leaving behind only the pungent bile. It is a sad and unpretty spectacle
I could never match ‘Shut up, you paedo’ or ‘intern all Muslims now’ in the wit stakes.
Seems odd that the incontrovertible truth that the future of Scotland has fuck all to do with tourist class lads like yourself and the doyenne of the doorstep & crap Harry & Megs scoops should be characterised as pungent bile. Is there a sweeter way to sugar that pill that you’d prefer?
I'm married to a Scot. Most of my holidays in recent years have been taken in Scotland. I worked for Chevron, the company that made the Ninian platform there, the largest object ever moved by man, to extract a billion barrels of oil in UK waters. Employing a vast army of construction staff.
What da fuck have YOU ever done for Scotland - other than shill for a clown troupe of self-interested hustlers who would have taken a fine people down the pan.
Lol.
‘tourist class lads like yourself and the doyenne of the doorstep & crap Harry & Megs scoops’
‘Most of my holidays in recent years have been taken in Scotland’
Question: "How many votes did Tony Blair receive in the Sedgefield constituency at the 1997 UK general election?"
Answer: "Tony Blair, who was the leader of the Labour Party at the time, stood for election in the Sedgefield constituency at the 1997 UK general election. The result of the election in Sedgefield was as follows:
Tony Blair (Labour Party) - 34,333 votes (71.6%) Tim Garden (Conservative Party) - 8,817 votes (18.4%) Alex White (Liberal Democrats) - 3,065 votes (6.4%) Others - 1,297 votes (2.7%)"
This is about as interesting as someone going through the entire internet and posting every page that is wrong.
There is something intriguing though. With my teacher hat on, wrong answers are much more revealing ("where did they get that from?") than correct ones.
There was a Baron Timothy Garden who was a Lib Dem peer, but no Conservative candidate I can find. My other guess is a mashup of two of the three Goodies.
There's an assumption that these sort of gaffes can be ironed out with some fine tuning. I have my doubts. This is probably just what the model does.
It's clearly too closely modelled on the human brain - tendency to make stuff up if it doesn't know.
I can't help but notice that yesterday's R&W poll (Labour lead 12, Tories on 32) got a lot more attention on here than today's You Gov (Labour lead 18, Tories on 27). Baffling.
Meanwhile, it's bloody freezing down here on the south coast, and we're thinking of moving to Scotland.
How much attention is this getting?
Fascinating how those who were crowing about how effective those Labour attack posters had been are now so quiet.
There's little doubt the coverage of the attack ads has damaged Labour in general and Starmer in particular but the real story in that graphic is the fall and rise of Rishi Sunak.
However, to assume either Sunak will continue to rise in popularity and Starmer will continue to fall or the popularity figures will accurately reflect voting intention would be foolish at this time.
Yes, I'd agree with that. It's not inevitable that Starmer will continue to erode, nor Sunak gain.
It's perfectly possible Sunak starts to go backwards again. As always, his own party will be his own worst enemy in this.
8C and leaden skies in the rugged Primrose Hill borderlands
UGH
Quite sunny and 15° in Leicester.
Apparently the Western Isles are bathed in fine sunshine! - 18C and cloudless skies in Portreee, Skye, today
The weather map has been inverted
So far this has been one of the nastier springs I can remember. A decidedly wet, dull March - worst for forty years, is being followed by a cold grey April. It's a bit like the endless winter that was lockdown 3 in early 2021
Tho I did manage to get 9 weeks in southeast Asia from Jan to March this winter, so maybe I should wheesht ma groaning
"Haud yer wheesht" is the correct terminology. But far better to leave this to the professionals.
(hwiːʃ ) or wheesht (hwiːʃt ) Scottish. exclamation. 1. a plea or demand for silence; hush. verb.
Yes. As in "wheesht!" = shut up. I've never seen it employed as a transitive verb though. "Haud yer wheesht" is the phrase usually used. Against stiff competition I would say that innapropriate use of Scottish terminology is your most annoying habit!
Incredibly stiff competition but I'm going to have to disagree.
Constantly saying the Spectator is "intellectually high powered".
This makes me grind my teeth and sometimes even log off.
I guess it's just possible that the poster who says that about the Spectator has some sort of personal interest in that publication? Can't think of any other explanation.
Just basic admiration. It’s the oldest weekly magazine in the world. And one of the most prestigious political magazines on the planet. Scratch a journalist and you’ll find someone who, at some point, wants to write for the Spectator, just for the prestige. I can only wish, from my humble post on the gazette
Their list of contributors is insane
Surprised you rose to the bait. Most of the luminaries in your list are deceased, ex-contributors, surely?
I like the way the Spectator REALLY annoys certain people, simply by being prestigious and successful
There is also a serious point here. It has been the most influential journal of the last 50 years in the UK simply by virtue of its major sway over the Tory party, who have governed Britain for most of that time. You can argue that this sway is a bad thing, you can’t deny it exists
And in two ex editors, Nigel Lawson and Boris Johnson, it changed the country and the western world
Past glories. I happened across a Spectator article the other day and it read like a student Trotskyist pamphlet, with all talk of 'the ruling elite', 'our rulers' and 'we the downtrodden'. Presumably this is because of the infiltration by the RCP crowd. The contributors of the Spectator and Brendan O'Neil's Spiked now seems wholly interchangeable.
Senior figures within the SNP have complained that the arrest of the party treasurer — just hours before Humza Yousaf made a key speech to launch his time as first minister — “stinks”.
The SNP was thrown into more chaos when Colin Beattie, a senior member of the Scottish parliament, was taken into custody as part of Operation Branchform, an investigation into possible fundraising fraud.
It is the second high-profile arrest made by officers examining concerns that £600,000 raised by SNP supporters specifically to fund a second independence referendum campaign had “gone missing”
Eyebrows had already been raised by the high-profile nature of raids this month on the Glasgow home of Nicola Sturgeon, the former first minister, and Peter Murrell, her husband and the former SNP chief executive.
Some sources complained that the response, which included uniformed officers marching in and out of the party’s headquarters, close to the Scottish parliament in Edinburgh was “disproportionate”. Murrell was arrested and questioned for 11 hours before being released....
...A senior figure in the SNP told The Times: “There’s a whole load of people going to be really angry about this, this stinks, this day of all days, that Colin Beattie would be arrested. No one would ever think there was a problem with Colin Beattie.”
Question: "How many votes did Tony Blair receive in the Sedgefield constituency at the 1997 UK general election?"
Answer: "Tony Blair, who was the leader of the Labour Party at the time, stood for election in the Sedgefield constituency at the 1997 UK general election. The result of the election in Sedgefield was as follows:
Tony Blair (Labour Party) - 34,333 votes (71.6%) Tim Garden (Conservative Party) - 8,817 votes (18.4%) Alex White (Liberal Democrats) - 3,065 votes (6.4%) Others - 1,297 votes (2.7%)"
This is about as interesting as someone going through the entire internet and posting every page that is wrong.
There is something intriguing though. With my teacher hat on, wrong answers are much more revealing ("where did they get that from?") than correct ones.
There was a Baron Timothy Garden who was a Lib Dem peer, but no Conservative candidate I can find. My other guess is a mashup of two of the three Goodies.
There's an assumption that these sort of gaffes can be ironed out with some fine tuning. I have my doubts. This is probably just what the model does.
It's clearly too closely modelled on the human brain - tendency to make stuff up if it doesn't know.
Though humans making stuff up usually have some sort of tell- at least, in spoken form. It's why Boris (for example) is more convincing a writer than a speaker. Even if you can numb the eye contact, making stuff up in real time is slower than telling the truth.
One of the scary things about Chat AI is that there's no making stuff up premium, because truth and blather are the same to it.
I asked ChatGPT: "What was the result in the St Albans constituency at the 2019 UK general election?"
Reply: "The St Albans constituency at the 2019 UK general election was won by the Conservative candidate, Anne Main. She won with a majority of 6,109 votes over the Liberal Democrat candidate, Daisy Cooper. The full results were as follows:
Anne Main (Conservative): 28,078 votes (48.3%) Daisy Cooper (Liberal Democrat): 21,969 votes (37.8%) Rebecca Lury (Labour): 7,530 votes (12.9%) Jules Sherrington (Green): 1,166 votes (2.0%)
Anne Main has been the MP for St Albans since 2005, and was re-elected for a fifth term in 2019."
This must be news to Daisy Cooper who's been sitting in the Commons as Lib Dem MP for St Albans since 2019 with a majority of around 6,000 votes.
Senior figures within the SNP have complained that the arrest of the party treasurer — just hours before Humza Yousaf made a key speech to launch his time as first minister — “stinks”.
The SNP was thrown into more chaos when Colin Beattie, a senior member of the Scottish parliament, was taken into custody as part of Operation Branchform, an investigation into possible fundraising fraud.
It is the second high-profile arrest made by officers examining concerns that £600,000 raised by SNP supporters specifically to fund a second independence referendum campaign had “gone missing”
Eyebrows had already been raised by the high-profile nature of raids this month on the Glasgow home of Nicola Sturgeon, the former first minister, and Peter Murrell, her husband and the former SNP chief executive.
Some sources complained that the response, which included uniformed officers marching in and out of the party’s headquarters, close to the Scottish parliament in Edinburgh was “disproportionate”. Murrell was arrested and questioned for 11 hours before being released....
...A senior figure in the SNP told The Times: “There’s a whole load of people going to be really angry about this, this stinks, this day of all days, that Colin Beattie would be arrested. No one would ever think there was a problem with Colin Beattie.”
He is responsible for the SNP accounts. The other officers named for this purpose are Peter Murrell and Nicola Sturgeon.
Both Beattie and Murrell are being investigated as suspects. They are being arrested and cautioned so that anything they say is admissible in evidence. It doesn’t necessarily mean they will face charges but if they do what they have said can be used in court.
Senior figures within the SNP have complained that the arrest of the party treasurer — just hours before Humza Yousaf made a key speech to launch his time as first minister — “stinks”.
The SNP was thrown into more chaos when Colin Beattie, a senior member of the Scottish parliament, was taken into custody as part of Operation Branchform, an investigation into possible fundraising fraud.
It is the second high-profile arrest made by officers examining concerns that £600,000 raised by SNP supporters specifically to fund a second independence referendum campaign had “gone missing”
Eyebrows had already been raised by the high-profile nature of raids this month on the Glasgow home of Nicola Sturgeon, the former first minister, and Peter Murrell, her husband and the former SNP chief executive.
Some sources complained that the response, which included uniformed officers marching in and out of the party’s headquarters, close to the Scottish parliament in Edinburgh was “disproportionate”. Murrell was arrested and questioned for 11 hours before being released....
...A senior figure in the SNP told The Times: “There’s a whole load of people going to be really angry about this, this stinks, this day of all days, that Colin Beattie would be arrested. No one would ever think there was a problem with Colin Beattie.”
Senior figures within the SNP have complained that the arrest of the party treasurer — just hours before Humza Yousaf made a key speech to launch his time as first minister — “stinks”.
The SNP was thrown into more chaos when Colin Beattie, a senior member of the Scottish parliament, was taken into custody as part of Operation Branchform, an investigation into possible fundraising fraud.
It is the second high-profile arrest made by officers examining concerns that £600,000 raised by SNP supporters specifically to fund a second independence referendum campaign had “gone missing”
Eyebrows had already been raised by the high-profile nature of raids this month on the Glasgow home of Nicola Sturgeon, the former first minister, and Peter Murrell, her husband and the former SNP chief executive.
Some sources complained that the response, which included uniformed officers marching in and out of the party’s headquarters, close to the Scottish parliament in Edinburgh was “disproportionate”. Murrell was arrested and questioned for 11 hours before being released....
...A senior figure in the SNP told The Times: “There’s a whole load of people going to be really angry about this, this stinks, this day of all days, that Colin Beattie would be arrested. No one would ever think there was a problem with Colin Beattie.”
Comments
"Savichev said he was aware of about 70 Russian inmates who had been killed by Wagner forces after refusing to carry out orders. “We didn’t consider them Russian citizens there,” he said. One Wagner mercenary was executed after a conflict involving forces loyal to Ramzan Kadyrov, the Kremlin-installed leader of Chechnya, he said."
If you refused to kill the children, they killed YOU
If Arm does not file for its public offer by the end of September it could become liable for $8.5 billion of Softbank debt for which it was made a guarantor.
https://www.electronicsweekly.com/news/business/818686-2023-04/
On the subject of UK PLC selling off its crown jewels, buying companies and immediately loading them up with debt is not just for football clubs, it seems.
Today it says it can't give information about anything that might have happened since September 2021.
Many, many other things, particularly Hyde. But not sex pests.
Question: "How many votes did Tony Blair receive in the Sedgefield constituency at the 1997 UK general election?"
Answer: "Tony Blair, who was the leader of the Labour Party at the time, stood for election in the Sedgefield constituency at the 1997 UK general election. The result of the election in Sedgefield was as follows:
Tony Blair (Labour Party) - 34,333 votes (71.6%)
Tim Garden (Conservative Party) - 8,817 votes (18.4%)
Alex White (Liberal Democrats) - 3,065 votes (6.4%)
Others - 1,297 votes (2.7%)"
The actual result was:
Blair (Lab) 33,526
Pitman (Con) 8,383
Beadle (LD) 3,050
So it gets the names of the Con and LD candidates completely wrong. Where does it get the names from? Weird.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Sedgefield_(UK_Parliament_constituency)
https://twitter.com/RealNoraC/status/1648365881334939655
“A big orange man did it and ran away.”
They’ve also submitted a Simpsons clip as part of the defence filing.
Seems odd that the incontrovertible truth that the future of Scotland has fuck all to do with tourist class lads like yourself and the doyenne of the doorstep & crap Harry & Megs scoops should be characterised as pungent bile. Is there a sweeter way to sugar that pill that you’d prefer?
Without question one of the "worst" geopolitical events in my entire life
Having a bad day?
https://www.dailyrecord.co.uk/news/scottish-news/snp-mps-castle-shame-over-21257217.amp
Better our own crooks in Holyrood than the crooks at Westminster, I suppose.
It will pass.
So I have been using it for all but the smallest purchases, for me less than 20 dollars.
I understand why they do this, but wish they wouldn't encourage consumers to go into debt this way.
And suspect it would be less profitable were more Americans willing and able to do simple math.
(In the US, credit card purchases have legal protections that debit cards don't, whch gives consumers an additional reason to purchase on credit.)
Why? Because the Alabama Democratic Party officially nominated States Rights ("Dixiecrat") Democratic candidate Strom Thurmond, as the official Democratic Party nominee under Alabama state law.
Also, in 1912, when former President Theodore Roosevelt challenged his hand-picked successor, William Howard Taft, for the GOP nomination, then ran anyway as Progressive ("Bull Moose") Party nominee, the Rough Rider was NOT on the November ballot in state of Oklahoma. Don't know why, but my guess is TR may have fallen afoul of a "sore loser" law banning candidates who contest but lose party primary, from running in general election.
They offer one shot virtual cards as well, for online safety.
If completely compromised you can cancel the card in seconds, get a new number from issuer and add the new card to ApplePay etc on your phone without waiting for the new physical card.
You simply transfer spending money onto the card, and don’t use your main cards.
From the Dictionary of the Scots Language
https://dsl.ac.uk/entry/snd/whisht
WHISHT, int., v., n., adj. Also wheesht, wheisht; weesht, weisht, wisht, woosht; wheest, wh(e)ist, whust, wiest; wheesh, whish, whush, whoosh, wish; quish (Sc. 1887 Jam.). Also wishtie, whistie ( < wheesht ye).
[ʍɪʃt, ʍiʃt; ʍist, ʍɪst; wiʃt, wɪʃt; ʍiʃ
2. tr. To silence, to cause to be quiet, to hush, quieten (Sh., Cai., e. and wm.Sc. 1974). Also in n.Eng. dial. To wheesh up, to hush up, conceal by silence.
Wgt. 1804 R. Couper Poetry II. 11:
A weel claw'd luif whishts the harangue.
Abd. 1868 W. Shelley Wayside Flowers 58:
As dream-fleyed bairnies, left their lanes, At mither's hame-come whisht their greet.
Sc. 1897 C. M. Campbell Deilie Jock iv.:
Wheesht your gab, if ye donna want me to throttle ye!
Slk. 1915 H. J. C. Clippings from Clayboddie (1921) 124:
The third morning it [alarm clock] merely wheeshes them to a little more sleep.
Gall. 1932 A. McCormick Galloway 171:
He offert me a sovran to wheesh it up.
wm.Sc. 1952 Gsw. Ballad Club V. 19:
The gloaming wheeshts the yowes to sleep.
Sh. 1955 New Shetlander No. 41. 14:
At lang last Magnie got him wheestit doon.
After a life like mine, and with a character to match, if the "most annoying thing I can do" is supposedly use Scots words incorrectly, then something is badly fankled
Tho in reality I used the word entirely correctly. It can be transitive, intransitive or a noun
And now I shall hie myself to yon gymnasium for a braw mickle of dook
NEW filing in Georgia election interference probe - DA Fani Willis seeking to DQ an attorney for 10 of the GOP fake electors, citing interviews *last week* where some electors pointed fingers at another for violating law among other things. #gapol
https://mobile.twitter.com/stphnfwlr/status/1648377840847536142
If true, this is serious misconduct by their attorney.
https://mobile.twitter.com/stphnfwlr/status/1648379258341933071
Also, the DA's office says that some of the 10 fake electors that Kimberly Debrow represents said they were never offered potential immunity, despite co-counsel telling the court none of them were interested.
It was the annual meeting of the Scandinavian children of the Lebensborn, the children produced by the Nazi programme of eugenic breeding between fine SS men and perfect female Aryan specimens of womanhood
https://historycollection.com/heres-what-to-know-about-lebensborn-the-nazi-human-selective-breeding-and-child-abduction-program/10/
Little known fact: one of the women from Abba - the brunette - is one of the Lebensborn kids
It was late winter and the Lebensborn society had chosen the Danish Lego HQ and theme park as the location for their meeting - in winter it is deserted (maybe shuttered) so I presume it made financial sense and also has that helpful airport
I was writing for the gazette and my job was to listen to these wrenching stories and at one point I realised I was listening to a woman explain how her father was a notorious SS sadist who was lynched at the end of the war, and how her mother committed suicide years later out of guilt for going along with this Satanic breeding programme, and as she spoke, and wept, I looked up from my notebook and realised that right behind her was a massive Lego pirate ship complete with full size Lego pirates with Lego swords and Lego wooden legs and Lego bottles of rum and even a Lego pirate dog
Constantly saying the Spectator is "intellectually high powered".
This makes me grind my teeth and sometimes even log off.
French publisher arrested in London on terrorism charge
Ernest Moret was stopped at St Pancras station to answer questions about taking part in French protests
https://www.theguardian.com/uk-news/2023/apr/18/french-publisher-arrested-london-counter-terrorism-police-ernest-moret
I”m not clear why British police should be taking an interest in a French political dispute.
The use of anti-terrorism legislation for something that pretty obviously isn’t does not look good.
Meanwhile, it's bloody freezing down here on the south coast, and we're thinking of moving to Scotland.
Currently, a large anticyclone is over Scandinavia and it's moving slowly but steadily west north west towards Greenland (the term is retrogression). This is essentially what happened in the infamous "Beast from the East" spell in 2018. Once the anticyclone departs pressure falls over Scandinavia and we get a north or north east regime set up so it's cold followed by more cold (were this January we'd be looking at frost and snow and daytime temperatures struggling to get above freezing).
Still, one piece of good news, the motorway we built directly to the end of the Channel Tunnel is now open for driving, rather than for lorry parking like last year.
I'm selling my flat and will likely have a fair chunk of cash that will essentially sit idle for a while. Could anyone suggest routes for that cash that avoid bank/system risk? I had hoped to just invest directly in gilts, but I can't see a 100% route of doing that. It seems that you have to go via 'computershare'.
I have most of my investments with Hargreaves Lansdowne, and they're great, but I don't want to have all of my eggs in one basket.
It doesn't have to be Gilts - could be UST or ECB bonds. Not interested in Gold or the like.
I'd appreciate any thoughts.
The classic example given in that article was asking it which weighs more, a pound of metal or two pounds of feathers. Because that is such a well known and oft quoted trick question with one pound of each material, it will tell you that one pound of stuff weighs the same as two pounds of another stuff. Which is an idiot mistake most young children would dodge.
Only naive believers like our Leon are fooled into thinking that it understands or ‘thinks’ about the text it is retrieving in any meaningful way.
Their list of contributors is insane
More variable polling today - Deltapoll shows a sharp fall in Labour support but not all of that translating directly to the Conservatives. Indeed, it's a curiousity as the published numbers from the last poll rounded up to 101% and the numbers from this are down to 99%.
YouGov hardly changed - Labour up a point and the lead back to 18 in a week which sees Labour's leads ranging from 12 (Redfield & Wilton) to 23 (Omnisis).
Tonight's R&W Red Wall polling doesn't show a lot of change with the swing from Conservative to Labour 12.5% in these constituencies (last night's national swing was 11%)
Most of the luminaries in your list are deceased, ex-contributors, surely?
There was a Baron Timothy Garden who was a Lib Dem peer, but no Conservative candidate I can find. My other guess is a mashup of two of the three Goodies.
What da fuck have YOU ever done for Scotland - other than shill for a clown troupe of self-interested hustlers who would have taken a fine people down the pan.
No overall maj 2.7
Con maj 8.2
Lab maj 2
https://www.betfair.com/exchange/plus/politics/market/1.167249195
It's funny becau Dry warm and sunny here in SE Spain as it has been continuously since December...
https://www.fscs.org.uk/making-a-claim/claims-process/temporary-high-balances/
There is also a serious point here. It has been the most influential journal of the last 50 years in the UK simply by virtue of its major sway over the Tory party, who have governed Britain for most of that time. You can argue that this sway is a bad thing, you can’t deny it exists
And in two ex editors, Nigel Lawson and Boris Johnson, it changed the country and the western world
Fascinating how those who were crowing about how effective those Labour attack posters had been are now so quiet.
Best journal in Britain, IMHO.
https://www.hl.co.uk/investment-services/active-savings/latest-rates-and-products
"Do they mean us? They surely do..."
This has happened in the last 6 months. There are potentially over 18 months to go until the next General Election.
We must forecast not nowcast.
Senior figures within the SNP have complained that the arrest of the party treasurer — just hours before Humza Yousaf made a key speech to launch his time as first minister — “stinks”.
The SNP was thrown into more chaos when Colin Beattie, a senior member of the Scottish parliament, was taken into custody as part of Operation Branchform, an investigation into possible fundraising fraud.
It is the second high-profile arrest made by officers examining concerns that £600,000 raised by SNP supporters specifically to fund a second independence referendum campaign had “gone missing”
Eyebrows had already been raised by the high-profile nature of raids this month on the Glasgow home of Nicola Sturgeon, the former first minister, and Peter Murrell, her husband and the former SNP chief executive.
Some sources complained that the response, which included uniformed officers marching in and out of the party’s headquarters, close to the Scottish parliament in Edinburgh was “disproportionate”. Murrell was arrested and questioned for 11 hours before being released....
...A senior figure in the SNP told The Times: “There’s a whole load of people going to be really angry about this, this stinks, this day of all days, that Colin Beattie would be arrested. No one would ever think there was a problem with Colin Beattie.”
https://www.thetimes.co.uk/article/senior-snp-members-say-arrest-of-colin-beattie-stinks-lxq0vg5gl
"Redfield & Wilton Strategies
@RedfieldWilton
Labour leads by 16% in the Red Wall.
Red Wall VI (16 April):
Labour 47% (-2)
Conservative 31% (+1)
Reform UK 7% (-2)
Liberal Democrat 7% (+1)
Green 5% (+1)
Plaid Cymru 1% (–)
Other 2% (+1)
Changes +/- 3 April"
https://twitter.com/RedfieldWilton/status/1648355817077309440
Changes since the 2019 general election:
Lab +9.1%
Con -15.7%
Swing 12.4%
AChinese businessman linked to a “secret police station” in London has organised Tory fundraising dinners and been photographed with party leaders, The Times can reveal.
Ruiyou Lin, 40, runs a takeaway ordering platform in Croydon from an office address which hosts an alleged overseas Chinese police station.
The businessman has attended Chinese Communist Party (CCP) political conferences in China. He has also held roles in several organisations in Britain with links to the party department responsible for overseeing the United Front strategy of using Chinese nationals living abroad to push its interests.
At the same time, Lin developed contacts in the Conservative Party in Britain, serving as vice-chairman of a constituency Chinese group and rubbing shoulders with the former prime ministers Boris Johnson and Theresa May. He has denied working for China and said he had no interest in British or Chinese politics but attended events to meet potential investors.
Authorities in the West have expressed growing concern about China’s attempts to influence domestic politics in foreign nations. On Monday US prosecutors arrested two men in New York for allegedly operating a secret police station in Manhattan.
https://www.thetimes.co.uk/article/chinese-businessman-with-tory-links-hosted-secret-police-station-l0rkbn06t
I suppose it's easier than dealing with the argument, though, and taxes the brain less.
However, to assume either Sunak will continue to rise in popularity and Starmer will continue to fall or the popularity figures will accurately reflect voting intention would be foolish at this time.
‘tourist class lads like yourself and the doyenne of the doorstep & crap Harry & Megs scoops’
‘Most of my holidays in recent years have been taken in Scotland’
It's perfectly possible Sunak starts to go backwards again. As always, his own party will be his own worst enemy in this.
Everyone seems very quick to write off Trump but I reckon he could surprise on the inside.
Things have fallen apart so quickly since he was elected that you can perhaps see why parties don’t go for leaders with beards…
https://twitter.com/keir_starmer/status/1648395000017981441
One of the scary things about Chat AI is that there's no making stuff up premium, because truth and blather are the same to it.
Reply: "The St Albans constituency at the 2019 UK general election was won by the Conservative candidate, Anne Main. She won with a majority of 6,109 votes over the Liberal Democrat candidate, Daisy Cooper. The full results were as follows:
Anne Main (Conservative): 28,078 votes (48.3%)
Daisy Cooper (Liberal Democrat): 21,969 votes (37.8%)
Rebecca Lury (Labour): 7,530 votes (12.9%)
Jules Sherrington (Green): 1,166 votes (2.0%)
Anne Main has been the MP for St Albans since 2005, and was re-elected for a fifth term in 2019."
This must be news to Daisy Cooper who's been sitting in the Commons as Lib Dem MP for St Albans since 2019 with a majority of around 6,000 votes.
Both Beattie and Murrell are being investigated as suspects. They are being arrested and cautioned so that anything they say is admissible in evidence. It doesn’t necessarily mean they will face charges but if they do what they have said can be used in court.
That ended well.