How will they build 1.5m new homes? In a recent announcement by major house builder Vistry (includes brands Countywide and Bovis) sales were down 28% in the first half and they have decided to hunker down - concentrating their resources on social housing projects and return capital to shareholders. Whilst would be great if all 1.5m new houses were social housing this is unlikely to happen - especially in "new towns" where a mix of housing is required. With interest rates expected to be high for some time sales of new houses for owner occupation will be depressed.
Smash the monopoly/oligopoly of house builders by moving away from our current convoluted planning system which grants entire estates to a single developer to build who can turn on or off construction at will to deliberately manage prices.
Instead move to a Japanese-style system where if land is zoned for housing anyone can build on it without asking any permission first from neighbours or Council or anyone else since permission has already been granted via it being in the right zone.
This must have been how we did it a few decades ago as the estate I live on was built by three different housebuilders.
That's what happened here: there were three different housebuilders for the village. Interestingly, they were not given large zones of the village to develop, leading to all the houses looking the same. Instead, they were given streets, or even different plots on the same street. Until this changed when the last part of the village was built, this led to quite a difference in styles in any one place.
For instance, there are no houses like mine on this street. But if I go three hundred metres away, I can find a couple that are identical.
That must have enormously increased construction costs.
Apparently not, from what I've been told.
Several housebuilders for a large development is common practice. Amongst other things it reduces risk by giving developers a portfolio, and there are specialists in different types of property eg retirement homes, sheltered developments ,medium rise timber frame etc.
I think a big issue here is proposed magic bullet solutions that are already done or doable in the existing system.
The cost point would normally be needing a minimum size of development to justify the overheads, including eg a sales office. If there is a 1500 dwelling development, developers would need areas of perhaps a couple of hundred houses to get nearly all the economies of scale.
Building a large development faster won't normally sell dwellings at a much faster rate, because the determinant is people living close enough to move whilst staying recognisably local for the rest of their lives, schools, family etc. Flitting 100 or 500 miles is a small minority, and - talking to half a dozen developers when I was marketing a piece of land - most buyers come from within easy transport distance.
Weisselberg just admitted that until Trump became president, he gave Trump the statements of financial condition before they were finalized, that Trump had an opportunity to review it, and that he “periodically” received comments. .. https://twitter.com/lawofruby/status/1711811412153049333
I’ll leave the investigation to the fire brigade, but Twitter has very much already decided what type of car was involved in the incident.
I was in that car park less than a week ago.
If it turns out that of the hundreds of cars there one of the small percentage of EVs caught fire while parked this will significantly add to concerns over their mass adoption. Hundreds of cars destroyed and untold damage to the recently constructed car park - my word this is shocking. I assume no human casualties? - which if so would be lucky.
How will they build 1.5m new homes? In a recent announcement by major house builder Vistry (includes brands Countywide and Bovis) sales were down 28% in the first half and they have decided to hunker down - concentrating their resources on social housing projects and return capital to shareholders. Whilst would be great if all 1.5m new houses were social housing this is unlikely to happen - especially in "new towns" where a mix of housing is required. With interest rates expected to be high for some time sales of new houses for owner occupation will be depressed.
Well obviously they won’t. The fact SKS alighted on that as his big idea suggests to me that the larder was somewhat bare.
I normally agree with you on most things but couldn't disagree with you more there.
The housing crisis and chronic housing shortage is the biggest crisis in this country today. For SKS to alight on this as his big idea shows he understands what is a real problem in a way Sunak and the Tories have failed to do since the modest planning reforms Boris intended were rejected.
If anything, SKS deserves criticism not because the 300k per annum target is too challenging, but that it's far too modest.
Even with 300k a year, with population growth continuing that is not going to make a dent in our housing shortage.
France has the same population as us and 13 million extra homes.
Wishing for 300k houses a year won't make it happen!!
Planning reform to solves issues that stop the properties being built will go a long way to help things.
I have a bridge for sale , call me
It will be compulsorily purchased. If required.
Then sold off when the government does a U turn...
Boring and useless I can see, but anybody who thinks Starmer is honest or has integrity simply hasn't been paying attention, after the way he sucked up to Corbyn and his supporters for years then ditched them because it was in his electoral interests to do so.
Just as lawyers make whatever argument suits their case at any moment, even if it contradicts what they said last week. That's a profession that makes prostitutes or journalists look honest by comparison. And of course great training for dishonest, weathervane politics - it's obviously no coincidence that Blair and Clinton were both lawyers.
It's projection.
People are projecting onto Starmer what they want to be true.
They do that with all politicians.
One thing to remember about Starmer is, given his age, he's unlikely to want to serve more then 4-5 years as PM if he wins.
So he may be in any case a transitory PM that people still project onto all the way through his premiership.
(Remarkable to think he's only eight years younger than Blair and actually older than Cameron.)
He is younger than me, so good for several decades yet.
I am no Starmer fan, and even less a Streeting fan, but Mrs Foxy is. After yesterday's speech Labour has her vote.
I live on one of the 7 Tory held seats with a large majority in Leics that encircle the city. On current polling some of these turn improbably red. I will wait for the candidates flyers before deciding but really hard to see the seat as other than Tory hold.
I’m not a Starmer fan, nor a natural Labour voter, but I think it’s time for a change of government, the current lot have no ideas left and need time away. I live in a very safe Tory seat in SW wilts, so it probably doesn’t matter who I vote for, and I respect our MP, but he won’t be getting my vote this time round.
Hey, the majority was as low as 10,000 in 2010, could be a nailbiter.
More interesting is whether the LDs can finally reclaim second place - there's swathes of seats Labour could cement themselves as the main opposition which had been LD territory.
1800 Tory majority on Electoral Calculus, it needs just a little tactical voting, but for who?
This is why the 3 way fight in Mid Beds is interesting. I am glad both Lab and LD are going for it. We need to know how things break.
The local councils would tell you it's LDs all the way. 3 Labour and 28 LDs vs 61 Con, with none of the Labour seats in the South West seat. The biggest settlement town council is LD controlled with no labour, who didn't even stand in several areas.
But that was also true during the previous GEs, when Labour took over second place, and with national momentum it's clear people can and do vote differently. So i think they will hoover up the opposition vote more and see that in similar seats.
Expect past council vote share not GE vote share on the LD leaflets.
There were two polls only in the week before the 2023 local elections, and between them the showed that the Labour lead over the Conservatives would be roughly 9% higher in a general election held in May 2023 than was reflected in the voting intention for the local elections, polling exactly the same sample.
These were the polls, search the data tables and you'll find I'm right.
I’ll leave the investigation to the fire brigade, but Twitter has very much already decided what type of car was involved in the incident.
I was in that car park less than a week ago.
If it turns out that of the hundreds of cars there one of the small percentage of EVs caught fire while parked this will significantly add to concerns over their mass adoption. Hundreds of cars destroyed and untold damage to the recently constructed car park - my word this is shocking. I assume no human casualties? - which if so would be lucky.
What of car parks under apartment buildings?
What if the fire started with an ICE vehicle? Should they be banned?
I’ll leave the investigation to the fire brigade, but Twitter has very much already decided what type of car was involved in the incident.
Twitter also very much decided what Clarkson's superinjunction was about.
Clarkson Superinjunction?
Good job that Luton Airport has mass transit straight from the railway station, with I think a 30 minute journey from St Pancras (or St Pancreas as we diabetics call it).
I’ll leave the investigation to the fire brigade, but Twitter has very much already decided what type of car was involved in the incident.
I was in that car park less than a week ago.
If it turns out that of the hundreds of cars there one of the small percentage of EVs caught fire while parked this will significantly add to concerns over their mass adoption. Hundreds of cars destroyed and untold damage to the recently constructed car park - my word this is shocking. I assume no human casualties? - which if so would be lucky.
What of car parks under apartment buildings?
What if the fire started with an ICE vehicle? Should they be banned?
I never said banned. If we have lived for many decades with EVs and someone then invented a ICE vehicle and this happened then the concerns would be identical.
Is it really so important that our leading politicians are a bit of a giggle? It's not what I look for, I must admit, but perhaps I'm an outlier.
I think the answer to that is that humour is a very powerful way of attracting attention and increasing persuasion. Used well, it can be devastating and its absence is a weakness. The only funny thing I can think of about SKS is that he supports Arsenal and even that is not as funny as it used to be.
How will they build 1.5m new homes? In a recent announcement by major house builder Vistry (includes brands Countywide and Bovis) sales were down 28% in the first half and they have decided to hunker down - concentrating their resources on social housing projects and return capital to shareholders. Whilst would be great if all 1.5m new houses were social housing this is unlikely to happen - especially in "new towns" where a mix of housing is required. With interest rates expected to be high for some time sales of new houses for owner occupation will be depressed.
Smash the monopoly/oligopoly of house builders by moving away from our current convoluted planning system which grants entire estates to a single developer to build who can turn on or off construction at will to deliberately manage prices.
Instead move to a Japanese-style system where if land is zoned for housing anyone can build on it without asking any permission first from neighbours or Council or anyone else since permission has already been granted via it being in the right zone.
In the UK an oligopoly constructs identikit houses. Over there they get built a house at the time and not all uniform, as each plot can be built based on the owners demands instead of what makes life profitable/easy for the developer.
Oh and switch taxation to an LVT that taxes land the same whether its developed or not, so that anyone banking land is paying the same taxes as anyone who lives in a home.
You still don't get it do you. We have that system in the UK. That is what the Local Plans are. But the big companies still go out and buy most of the land. Why? Primarily because they are the only ones who can get the finance. This isn't me saying this, its the small housebuilders.
I’ll leave the investigation to the fire brigade, but Twitter has very much already decided what type of car was involved in the incident.
I was in that car park less than a week ago.
If it turns out that of the hundreds of cars there one of the small percentage of EVs caught fire while parked this will significantly add to concerns over their mass adoption. Hundreds of cars destroyed and untold damage to the recently constructed car park - my word this is shocking. I assume no human casualties? - which if so would be lucky.
What of car parks under apartment buildings?
What if the fire started with an ICE vehicle? Should they be banned?
I must admit I hadn't even thought of the EV angle. I was thinking more that this looked like arson - especially after the similar fire in Liverpool. I was wondering if there is a more militant faction of (for example) XR that is taking things into their own hands.
Is it really so important that our leading politicians are a bit of a giggle? It's not what I look for, I must admit, but perhaps I'm an outlier.
It’s an asset in campaigning to be relatively charismatic. It probably helps in negotiating too. Obviously you are trivialising it as “a bit of a giggle” to downplay it as your man doesn’t have much charisma; luckily enough, neither does his opponent now, so that weakness is nullified.
Are our police forces trying to put forward a USA-style brand identity? Not sure about that. This is the City of London police. The enforcement is great, but unfortunately the scrote can get the car back. The pound needs to be in Aberdeen.
I’ll leave the investigation to the fire brigade, but Twitter has very much already decided what type of car was involved in the incident.
I was in that car park less than a week ago.
If it turns out that of the hundreds of cars there one of the small percentage of EVs caught fire while parked this will significantly add to concerns over their mass adoption. Hundreds of cars destroyed and untold damage to the recently constructed car park - my word this is shocking. I assume no human casualties? - which if so would be lucky.
What of car parks under apartment buildings?
What if the fire started with an ICE vehicle? Should they be banned?
I must admit I hadn't even thought of the EV angle. I was thinking more that this looked like arson - especially after the similar fire in Liverpool. I was wondering if there is a more militant faction of (for example) XR that is taking things into their own hands.
Yes arson was my first thought too. I should think that the area is well served by surveillance cameras.
I’ll leave the investigation to the fire brigade, but Twitter has very much already decided what type of car was involved in the incident.
I was in that car park less than a week ago.
If it turns out that of the hundreds of cars there one of the small percentage of EVs caught fire while parked this will significantly add to concerns over their mass adoption. Hundreds of cars destroyed and untold damage to the recently constructed car park - my word this is shocking. I assume no human casualties? - which if so would be lucky.
What of car parks under apartment buildings?
Good morning
Apparently 5 people have been taken to hospital with smoke inhalation, including some fire fighters
The chief fire officer said that a car caught fire on the 3rd floor and it rapidly spread to multiple floors and resulting in the partial collapse of the car park.
He also said upto 1500 cars were in the car park at the time
It remains to be seen if an ev was the source of the fire, but there must have been quite a number of evs that did catch fire
This could have wide implications for evs, and reminds me of the 1979 fire in Woolworths in Manchester caused by a damaged electrical cable igniting furniture made from polyurethane foam in which 10 people died which led to the furniture and furnishings fire safety regulations act of 1988
How will they build 1.5m new homes? In a recent announcement by major house builder Vistry (includes brands Countywide and Bovis) sales were down 28% in the first half and they have decided to hunker down - concentrating their resources on social housing projects and return capital to shareholders. Whilst would be great if all 1.5m new houses were social housing this is unlikely to happen - especially in "new towns" where a mix of housing is required. With interest rates expected to be high for some time sales of new houses for owner occupation will be depressed.
Smash the monopoly/oligopoly of house builders by moving away from our current convoluted planning system which grants entire estates to a single developer to build who can turn on or off construction at will to deliberately manage prices.
Instead move to a Japanese-style system where if land is zoned for housing anyone can build on it without asking any permission first from neighbours or Council or anyone else since permission has already been granted via it being in the right zone.
This must have been how we did it a few decades ago as the estate I live on was built by three different housebuilders.
That's what happened here: there were three different housebuilders for the village. Interestingly, they were not given large zones of the village to develop, leading to all the houses looking the same. Instead, they were given streets, or even different plots on the same street. Until this changed when the last part of the village was built, this led to quite a difference in styles in any one place.
For instance, there are no houses like mine on this street. But if I go three hundred metres away, I can find a couple that are identical.
That must have enormously increased construction costs.
Apparently not, from what I've been told.
Several housebuilders for a large development is common practice. Amongst other things it reduces risk by giving developers a portfolio, and there are specialists in different types of property eg retirement homes, sheltered developments ,medium rise timber frame etc.
I think a big issue here is proposed magic bullet solutions that are already done or doable in the existing system.
The cost point would normally be needing a minimum size of development to justify the overheads, including eg a sales office. If there is a 1500 dwelling development, developers would need areas of perhaps a couple of hundred houses to get nearly all the economies of scale.
Building a large development faster won't normally sell dwellings at a much faster rate, because the determinant is people living close enough to move whilst staying recognisably local for the rest of their lives, schools, family etc. Flitting 100 or 500 miles is a small minority, and - talking to half a dozen developers when I was marketing a piece of land - most buyers come from within easy transport distance.
From running around the new bits of our village that is being built, there are seemingly lots of oriental-looking prospective buyers. And there has been an anecdotal increase in Chinese kids in local schools. Two ex-Hong Kong residents have purchased new houses (I've no probs with that).
Don't know if that's just a phenomena local to here.
(Tried to write the above without sounding a little bit racist...)
I’ll leave the investigation to the fire brigade, but Twitter has very much already decided what type of car was involved in the incident.
I was in that car park less than a week ago.
If it turns out that of the hundreds of cars there one of the small percentage of EVs caught fire while parked this will significantly add to concerns over their mass adoption. Hundreds of cars destroyed and untold damage to the recently constructed car park - my word this is shocking. I assume no human casualties? - which if so would be lucky.
What of car parks under apartment buildings?
What if the fire started with an ICE vehicle? Should they be banned?
I must admit I hadn't even thought of the EV angle. I was thinking more that this looked like arson - especially after the similar fire in Liverpool. I was wondering if there is a more militant faction of (for example) XR that is taking things into their own hands.
The suggestion is that the car park fire started on the third floor. I'm trying to think of the normal order of things here - disabled spots, EV charging spots, etc. and thinking maybe that's a normal spot where the fire started??
I’ll leave the investigation to the fire brigade, but Twitter has very much already decided what type of car was involved in the incident.
Twitter also very much decided what Clarkson's superinjunction was about.
Clarkson Superinjunction?
Good job that Luton Airport has mass transit straight from the railway station, with I think a 30 minute journey from St Pancras (or St Pancreas as we diabetics call it).
On that note, the GLP1 weight loss drugs might have a very large impact in diabetes.
Halting a clinical trial early is either very bad, or (as in this case) very good news indeed.
https://twitter.com/meremrtl/status/1711867548256334171 Novo has halted its FLOW trial, which was evaluating the impact of semaglutide on renal impairment in type 2 diabetes patients with chronic kidney disease. The decision comes after an independent Data Monitoring Committee recommended the early cessation of the trial due to meeting pre-specified efficacy criteria in an interim analysis. This suggests a strong positive outcome and could be a significant catalyst for the stock.
Primary outcome measure: "Time to first occurrence of a composite primary outcome event defined as persistent eGFR decline of greater than or equal to 50 percentage from trial start, reaching ESRD, death from kidney disease or death from cardiovascular disease."
Kidney disease is very costly for the NHS to treat.
Morning all! A nice gentle 19 hour day with client top brass and a big customer meeting we have been planning for months. A spectacular success on all fronts - even my flight home (from Gatwick, not Luton) was on time which is unheard of.
Missed the Starmer speech but from what I have seen in clips and reportage the protestor actually helped. The end of the Jezbollah era neatly dragged off the stage as a bemused Starmer stands with actual glitter on his shoulders as he rolls his sleeves up.
When you look at the two conferences - content, tone, number in attendance, and *who* was in attendance - it is clear that this is the last waltz for the Tories and everyone knows it.
The challenge for Starmer is that he has big ambitions (his 5 pledges are huge) and now wants to do things like transform housing. A comprehensive new towns program is something I have been calling for over the last few months as the only obvious solution to the current impasse.
Exactly how we get there will need to be worked out. But we have to have the ambition to fix things like housing - you build nothing by saying that its too difficult or can't be done or its too expensive. Bollocks - Britain was bombed and bankrupt after the end of the war but achieved transformational things. So it can be done. You have to *want* it.
Is it really so important that our leading politicians are a bit of a giggle? It's not what I look for, I must admit, but perhaps I'm an outlier.
It’s an asset in campaigning to be relatively charismatic. It probably helps in negotiating too. Obviously you are trivialising it as “a bit of a giggle” to downplay it as your man doesn’t have much charisma; luckily enough, neither does his opponent now, so that weakness is nullified.
Yes but campaigning is about getting the job. What kinabalu is talking about is actually doing the job.
Can we really say that the most charismatic PMs of the last 70 years have been the best? Even someone like Thatcher was not exactly the life and soul of the party.
I think the country is ready for boring for a while. Whether they are ready for Labour policies is another matter but we will just have to see how that goes and hope for the best.
Yep! The cost cap severely restricts the spending, but the sponsorship stays the same; and new, more profitable races mean the prize money fund is also much increased.
Larry Stroll and friends are about $300m into Aston Martin, and can at least double if not treble their money if they were to sell up now. Not a bad return in five years.
The Luton airport fire demonstrates just how dangerous EVs are. Normal petrol and diesel cars do not have anything flammable - no tanks full of explosive liquids - and so are immune to fire.
I’ll leave the investigation to the fire brigade, but Twitter has very much already decided what type of car was involved in the incident.
Twitter also very much decided what Clarkson's superinjunction was about.
Clarkson Superinjunction?
Good job that Luton Airport has mass transit straight from the railway station, with I think a 30 minute journey from St Pancras (or St Pancreas as we diabetics call it).
On that note, the GLP1 weight loss drugs might have a very large impact in diabetes.
Halting a clinical trial early is either very bad, or (as in this case) very good news indeed.
https://twitter.com/meremrtl/status/1711867548256334171 Novo has halted its FLOW trial, which was evaluating the impact of semaglutide on renal impairment in type 2 diabetes patients with chronic kidney disease. The decision comes after an independent Data Monitoring Committee recommended the early cessation of the trial due to meeting pre-specified efficacy criteria in an interim analysis. This suggests a strong positive outcome and could be a significant catalyst for the stock.
Primary outcome measure: "Time to first occurrence of a composite primary outcome event defined as persistent eGFR decline of greater than or equal to 50 percentage from trial start, reaching ESRD, death from kidney disease or death from cardiovascular disease."
Kidney disease is very costly for the NHS to treat.
There is a massive problem with diabetes drugs right now - or rather with the supply. Now that someone has discovered that they are a good weight loss drug there is a world wide shortage of some of them. All being bought up by fat Americans at 5 times the price that is paid for them as diabetes drugs.
This is from my neighbour who is a diabetes nurse. She is having real issues and having to put people back on insulin because of the shortage.
I’ll leave the investigation to the fire brigade, but Twitter has very much already decided what type of car was involved in the incident.
I was in that car park less than a week ago.
If it turns out that of the hundreds of cars there one of the small percentage of EVs caught fire while parked this will significantly add to concerns over their mass adoption. Hundreds of cars destroyed and untold damage to the recently constructed car park - my word this is shocking. I assume no human casualties? - which if so would be lucky.
What of car parks under apartment buildings?
What if the fire started with an ICE vehicle? Should they be banned?
I must admit I hadn't even thought of the EV angle. I was thinking more that this looked like arson - especially after the similar fire in Liverpool. I was wondering if there is a more militant faction of (for example) XR that is taking things into their own hands.
Morning all! A nice gentle 19 hour day with client top brass and a big customer meeting we have been planning for months. A spectacular success on all fronts - even my flight home (from Gatwick, not Luton) was on time which is unheard of.
Missed the Starmer speech but from what I have seen in clips and reportage the protestor actually helped. The end of the Jezbollah era neatly dragged off the stage as a bemused Starmer stands with actual glitter on his shoulders as he rolls his sleeves up.
When you look at the two conferences - content, tone, number in attendance, and *who* was in attendance - it is clear that this is the last waltz for the Tories and everyone knows it.
The challenge for Starmer is that he has big ambitions (his 5 pledges are huge) and now wants to do things like transform housing. A comprehensive new towns program is something I have been calling for over the last few months as the only obvious solution to the current impasse.
Exactly how we get there will need to be worked out. But we have to have the ambition to fix things like housing - you build nothing by saying that its too difficult or can't be done or its too expensive. Bollocks - Britain was bombed and bankrupt after the end of the war but achieved transformational things. So it can be done. You have to *want* it.
I agree - and for me the biggest contrast was that Labour want to start doing stuff, the Tories are all about stopping things.
Boring, maybe - but I'll take 'boring' optimism and ambition over petty small-mindedness any day.
I’ll leave the investigation to the fire brigade, but Twitter has very much already decided what type of car was involved in the incident.
I was in that car park less than a week ago.
If it turns out that of the hundreds of cars there one of the small percentage of EVs caught fire while parked this will significantly add to concerns over their mass adoption. Hundreds of cars destroyed and untold damage to the recently constructed car park - my word this is shocking. I assume no human casualties? - which if so would be lucky.
What of car parks under apartment buildings?
What if the fire started with an ICE vehicle? Should they be banned?
Very unlikely a snow plough or gritting wagon caused it as it was 20 degrees
Is it really so important that our leading politicians are a bit of a giggle? It's not what I look for, I must admit, but perhaps I'm an outlier.
It’s an asset in campaigning to be relatively charismatic. It probably helps in negotiating too. Obviously you are trivialising it as “a bit of a giggle” to downplay it as your man doesn’t have much charisma; luckily enough, neither does his opponent now, so that weakness is nullified.
Yes but campaigning is about getting the job. What kinabalu is talking about is actually doing the job.
Can we really say that the most charismatic PMs of the last 70 years have been the best? Even someone like Thatcher was not exactly the life and soul of the party.
I think the country is ready for boring for a while. Whether they are ready for Labour policies is another matter but we will just have to see how that goes and hope for the best.
He didn’t say he was talking about actually doing the job.
I agree, it’s better that politicians go about their business quietly and competently. I was interested in the relationship between personality and getting elected
I’ll leave the investigation to the fire brigade, but Twitter has very much already decided what type of car was involved in the incident.
I was in that car park less than a week ago.
If it turns out that of the hundreds of cars there one of the small percentage of EVs caught fire while parked this will significantly add to concerns over their mass adoption. Hundreds of cars destroyed and untold damage to the recently constructed car park - my word this is shocking. I assume no human casualties? - which if so would be lucky.
What of car parks under apartment buildings?
What if the fire started with an ICE vehicle? Should they be banned?
I must admit I hadn't even thought of the EV angle. I was thinking more that this looked like arson - especially after the similar fire in Liverpool. I was wondering if there is a more militant faction of (for example) XR that is taking things into their own hands.
The suggestion is that the car park fire started on the third floor. I'm trying to think of the normal order of things here - disabled spots, EV charging spots, etc. and thinking maybe that's a normal spot where the fire started??
The third floor at the Luton Car park is where Meet and Greet happens
I’ll leave the investigation to the fire brigade, but Twitter has very much already decided what type of car was involved in the incident.
Twitter also very much decided what Clarkson's superinjunction was about.
Clarkson Superinjunction?
Good job that Luton Airport has mass transit straight from the railway station, with I think a 30 minute journey from St Pancras (or St Pancreas as we diabetics call it).
On that note, the GLP1 weight loss drugs might have a very large impact in diabetes.
Halting a clinical trial early is either very bad, or (as in this case) very good news indeed.
https://twitter.com/meremrtl/status/1711867548256334171 Novo has halted its FLOW trial, which was evaluating the impact of semaglutide on renal impairment in type 2 diabetes patients with chronic kidney disease. The decision comes after an independent Data Monitoring Committee recommended the early cessation of the trial due to meeting pre-specified efficacy criteria in an interim analysis. This suggests a strong positive outcome and could be a significant catalyst for the stock.
Primary outcome measure: "Time to first occurrence of a composite primary outcome event defined as persistent eGFR decline of greater than or equal to 50 percentage from trial start, reaching ESRD, death from kidney disease or death from cardiovascular disease."
Kidney disease is very costly for the NHS to treat.
Assuming a large and significant improvement in the treatment arm: Presumably the "trial" continues but in a very different format. Those who were on the new treatment arm are providing very useful data and they shoud continued to be followed up. Those on the standard treatment arm should of course be moved over to the new treatment.
The Luton airport fire demonstrates just how dangerous EVs are. Normal petrol and diesel cars do not have anything flammable - no tanks full of explosive liquids - and so are immune to fire.
Time to Ban EVs. For the children.
I haven't heard anyone suggest evs be banned, and may I say a rather extreme response to an incident that could have implications for evs and how to ensure safety is addressed and even regulated effectively
How will they build 1.5m new homes? In a recent announcement by major house builder Vistry (includes brands Countywide and Bovis) sales were down 28% in the first half and they have decided to hunker down - concentrating their resources on social housing projects and return capital to shareholders. Whilst would be great if all 1.5m new houses were social housing this is unlikely to happen - especially in "new towns" where a mix of housing is required. With interest rates expected to be high for some time sales of new houses for owner occupation will be depressed.
Smash the monopoly/oligopoly of house builders by moving away from our current convoluted planning system which grants entire estates to a single developer to build who can turn on or off construction at will to deliberately manage prices.
Instead move to a Japanese-style system where if land is zoned for housing anyone can build on it without asking any permission first from neighbours or Council or anyone else since permission has already been granted via it being in the right zone.
This must have been how we did it a few decades ago as the estate I live on was built by three different housebuilders.
That's what happened here: there were three different housebuilders for the village. Interestingly, they were not given large zones of the village to develop, leading to all the houses looking the same. Instead, they were given streets, or even different plots on the same street. Until this changed when the last part of the village was built, this led to quite a difference in styles in any one place.
For instance, there are no houses like mine on this street. But if I go three hundred metres away, I can find a couple that are identical.
That must have enormously increased construction costs.
Apparently not, from what I've been told.
Several housebuilders for a large development is common practice. Amongst other things it reduces risk by giving developers a portfolio, and there are specialists in different types of property eg retirement homes, sheltered developments ,medium rise timber frame etc.
I think a big issue here is proposed magic bullet solutions that are already done or doable in the existing system.
The cost point would normally be needing a minimum size of development to justify the overheads, including eg a sales office. If there is a 1500 dwelling development, developers would need areas of perhaps a couple of hundred houses to get nearly all the economies of scale.
Building a large development faster won't normally sell dwellings at a much faster rate, because the determinant is people living close enough to move whilst staying recognisably local for the rest of their lives, schools, family etc. Flitting 100 or 500 miles is a small minority, and - talking to half a dozen developers when I was marketing a piece of land - most buyers come from within easy transport distance.
From running around the new bits of our village that is being built, there are seemingly lots of oriental-looking prospective buyers. And there has been an anecdotal increase in Chinese kids in local schools. Two ex-Hong Kong residents have purchased new houses (I've no probs with that).
Don't know if that's just a phenomena local to here.
(Tried to write the above without sounding a little bit racist...)
There’s around 150k people arrived from Hong Kong in the last couple of years, after the Chinese crackdown there.
I’ll leave the investigation to the fire brigade, but Twitter has very much already decided what type of car was involved in the incident.
Twitter also very much decided what Clarkson's superinjunction was about.
Clarkson Superinjunction?
Good job that Luton Airport has mass transit straight from the railway station, with I think a 30 minute journey from St Pancras (or St Pancreas as we diabetics call it).
On that note, the GLP1 weight loss drugs might have a very large impact in diabetes.
Halting a clinical trial early is either very bad, or (as in this case) very good news indeed.
https://twitter.com/meremrtl/status/1711867548256334171 Novo has halted its FLOW trial, which was evaluating the impact of semaglutide on renal impairment in type 2 diabetes patients with chronic kidney disease. The decision comes after an independent Data Monitoring Committee recommended the early cessation of the trial due to meeting pre-specified efficacy criteria in an interim analysis. This suggests a strong positive outcome and could be a significant catalyst for the stock.
Primary outcome measure: "Time to first occurrence of a composite primary outcome event defined as persistent eGFR decline of greater than or equal to 50 percentage from trial start, reaching ESRD, death from kidney disease or death from cardiovascular disease."
Kidney disease is very costly for the NHS to treat.
There is a massive problem with diabetes drugs right now - or rather with the supply. Now that someone has discovered that they are a good weight loss drug there is a world wide shortage of some of them. All being bought up by fat Americans at 5 times the price that is paid for them as diabetes drugs.
This is from my neighbour who is a diabetes nurse. She is having real issues and having to put people back on insulin because of the shortage.
No consolation for now, but that situation likely won't last all that long, as production ramps up.
The point is, ladies and gentleman, that boring -- for lack of a better word -- is good.
Boring is right.
Boring works.
Boring clarifies, cuts through, and captures the essence of the Governmental spirit.
Boring, in all of its forms -- Boring in life, boring with money, boring in love, boring knowledge -- has marked the upward surge of Government.
And boring -- you mark my words -- will not only save the Labour party, but that other malfunctioning corporation called the United Kingdom.
(with apologies to Gordon Gekko)
Okay so it doesn't quite work but you get what I mean.
A politician who has no charisma is preferable to a politician who has no ideas, no principles, no ability to govern effectively, no sane people left in their party or no conception of the truth. Starmer will be fine, and a significant improvement on his predecessors.
I’ll leave the investigation to the fire brigade, but Twitter has very much already decided what type of car was involved in the incident.
I was in that car park less than a week ago.
If it turns out that of the hundreds of cars there one of the small percentage of EVs caught fire while parked this will significantly add to concerns over their mass adoption. Hundreds of cars destroyed and untold damage to the recently constructed car park - my word this is shocking. I assume no human casualties? - which if so would be lucky.
What of car parks under apartment buildings?
What if the fire started with an ICE vehicle? Should they be banned?
I must admit I hadn't even thought of the EV angle. I was thinking more that this looked like arson - especially after the similar fire in Liverpool. I was wondering if there is a more militant faction of (for example) XR that is taking things into their own hands.
Has anyone got numbers on this? The best I have are that EV fires are very rare, and ICEV fires are more common - but I have nothing very authoritative.
ROSPA did this review some time ago, and risk profiles are different. EVs, aiui, have eg a risk of delayed fires - which sounds like one possible mechanism for an airport parking fire.
I’ll leave the investigation to the fire brigade, but Twitter has very much already decided what type of car was involved in the incident.
I was in that car park less than a week ago.
If it turns out that of the hundreds of cars there one of the small percentage of EVs caught fire while parked this will significantly add to concerns over their mass adoption. Hundreds of cars destroyed and untold damage to the recently constructed car park - my word this is shocking. I assume no human casualties? - which if so would be lucky.
What of car parks under apartment buildings?
Good morning
Apparently 5 people have been taken to hospital with smoke inhalation, including some fire fighters
The chief fire officer said that a car caught fire on the 3rd floor and it rapidly spread to multiple floors and resulting in the partial collapse of the car park.
He also said upto 1500 cars were in the car park at the time
It remains to be seen if an ev was the source of the fire, but there must have been quite a number of evs that did catch fire
This could have wide implications for evs, and reminds me of the 1979 fire in Woolworths in Manchester caused by a damaged electrical cable igniting furniture made from polyurethane foam in which 10 people died which led to the furniture and furnishings fire safety regulations act of 1988
My Dad was one of those treated at the scene that day having bought his lunch in the top floor Woolworths cafe a few minutes before the fire really took hold.
Are our police forces trying to put forward a USA-style brand identity? Not sure about that. This is the City of London police. The enforcement is great, but unfortunately the scrote can get the car back. The pound needs to be in Aberdeen.
The Luton airport fire demonstrates just how dangerous EVs are. Normal petrol and diesel cars do not have anything flammable - no tanks full of explosive liquids - and so are immune to fire.
Time to Ban EVs. For the children.
I haven't heard anyone suggest evs be banned, and may I say a rather extreme response to an incident that could have implications for evs and how to ensure safety is addressed and even regulated effectively
And what implications if it was a petrol engined car ?
The Luton airport fire demonstrates just how dangerous EVs are. Normal petrol and diesel cars do not have anything flammable - no tanks full of explosive liquids - and so are immune to fire.
Time to Ban EVs. For the children.
I haven't heard anyone suggest evs be banned, and may I say a rather extreme response to an incident that could have implications for evs and how to ensure safety is addressed and even regulated effectively
And what implications if it was a petrol engined car ?
Is it really so important that our leading politicians are a bit of a giggle? It's not what I look for, I must admit, but perhaps I'm an outlier.
I think the answer to that is that humour is a very powerful way of attracting attention and increasing persuasion. Used well, it can be devastating and its absence is a weakness. The only funny thing I can think of about SKS is that he supports Arsenal and even that is not as funny as it used to be.
That's true about humour (and Arsenal). But imo he's ultra serious because he feels the weight and the pressure of his position; on the cusp of power and not (unlike some) possessed of an innate sense of entitlement that it's no more than his due. Once he becomes PM and gets settled in I think he'll relax into it. I know Brown didn't (it was the opposite) but Starmer strikes me as more rounded than Brown and therefore more likely to find the right balance in the job. If I'm right (and I'm pretty confident of this) the lighter humourous side of him will come to the fore and along with the decade of renewal he'll give us all a few laughs.
I’ll leave the investigation to the fire brigade, but Twitter has very much already decided what type of car was involved in the incident.
I was in that car park less than a week ago.
If it turns out that of the hundreds of cars there one of the small percentage of EVs caught fire while parked this will significantly add to concerns over their mass adoption. Hundreds of cars destroyed and untold damage to the recently constructed car park - my word this is shocking. I assume no human casualties? - which if so would be lucky.
What of car parks under apartment buildings?
The SNP will no doubt get the blame. Given that, back c. 2013, PBUnionists got excited about arson of a Slab MP or MSP's office, which turned out to be an ordinary random car fire in the side yard melting the plastic window (and not much more).
There is a ruthless side to Starmer. The way he has driven his predecessor out of the party to make the point he is “different” is a good example. Even Blair tolerated Corbyn throughout his premiership and did not feel that need. The alleged recording of him being abusive to a staff member the other day fits that pattern too. Whether that was fake or not I don’t think that he would be fun to work for.
The audio recording was fake.
I find it bizarre that you seem unbothered as to whether it “was fake or not”! Does truth not matter any more? It was fake and I fail to see any evidence that Starmer is difficult to work for.
Nothing in that story relates to the behaviour of Keir Starmer.
Neither does it fit with 'several stories about staffers leaving the Labour Pary with NDAs'. In a thread praising the integrity of lawyers it would be nice if one of the lawyers on here aimed for a little more precision.
I’ll leave the investigation to the fire brigade, but Twitter has very much already decided what type of car was involved in the incident.
I was in that car park less than a week ago.
If it turns out that of the hundreds of cars there one of the small percentage of EVs caught fire while parked this will significantly add to concerns over their mass adoption. Hundreds of cars destroyed and untold damage to the recently constructed car park - my word this is shocking. I assume no human casualties? - which if so would be lucky.
What of car parks under apartment buildings?
What if the fire started with an ICE vehicle? Should they be banned?
I must admit I hadn't even thought of the EV angle. I was thinking more that this looked like arson - especially after the similar fire in Liverpool. I was wondering if there is a more militant faction of (for example) XR that is taking things into their own hands.
Has anyone got numbers on this? The best I have are that EV fires are very rare, and ICEV fires are more common - but I have nothing very authoritative.
ROSPA did this review some time ago, and risk profiles are different. EVs, aiui, have eg a risk of delayed fires - which sounds like one possible mechanism for an airport parking fire.
OTOH some outlets such as GB News and the Daily Mail push scare stories.
The firefighting requirements are quite different for battery-powered cars vs automotive petrol tanks.
Even if this fire didn’t originate with an EV, the presence of them close by may have contributed both to the severity of the blaze, and the inability of firefighters to bring it under control quickly.
I suspect that there needs to be an update to the standards for car park sprinkler systems, to take account of the increasing prevalence of large batteries that can sustain combustion autonomously. Battery fires can’t be put out with foam, CO2, or water, as the batteries themselves contain compounds of oxygen. The only option is to put hundreds of gallons of water on the fire, and wait for things to cool down.
How will they build 1.5m new homes? In a recent announcement by major house builder Vistry (includes brands Countywide and Bovis) sales were down 28% in the first half and they have decided to hunker down - concentrating their resources on social housing projects and return capital to shareholders. Whilst would be great if all 1.5m new houses were social housing this is unlikely to happen - especially in "new towns" where a mix of housing is required. With interest rates expected to be high for some time sales of new houses for owner occupation will be depressed.
Smash the monopoly/oligopoly of house builders by moving away from our current convoluted planning system which grants entire estates to a single developer to build who can turn on or off construction at will to deliberately manage prices.
Instead move to a Japanese-style system where if land is zoned for housing anyone can build on it without asking any permission first from neighbours or Council or anyone else since permission has already been granted via it being in the right zone.
This must have been how we did it a few decades ago as the estate I live on was built by three different housebuilders.
That's what happened here: there were three different housebuilders for the village. Interestingly, they were not given large zones of the village to develop, leading to all the houses looking the same. Instead, they were given streets, or even different plots on the same street. Until this changed when the last part of the village was built, this led to quite a difference in styles in any one place.
For instance, there are no houses like mine on this street. But if I go three hundred metres away, I can find a couple that are identical.
That must have enormously increased construction costs.
Apparently not, from what I've been told.
Several housebuilders for a large development is common practice. Amongst other things it reduces risk by giving developers a portfolio, and there are specialists in different types of property eg retirement homes, sheltered developments ,medium rise timber frame etc.
I think a big issue here is proposed magic bullet solutions that are already done or doable in the existing system.
The cost point would normally be needing a minimum size of development to justify the overheads, including eg a sales office. If there is a 1500 dwelling development, developers would need areas of perhaps a couple of hundred houses to get nearly all the economies of scale.
Building a large development faster won't normally sell dwellings at a much faster rate, because the determinant is people living close enough to move whilst staying recognisably local for the rest of their lives, schools, family etc. Flitting 100 or 500 miles is a small minority, and - talking to half a dozen developers when I was marketing a piece of land - most buyers come from within easy transport distance.
From running around the new bits of our village that is being built, there are seemingly lots of oriental-looking prospective buyers. And there has been an anecdotal increase in Chinese kids in local schools. Two ex-Hong Kong residents have purchased new houses (I've no probs with that).
Don't know if that's just a phenomena local to here.
(Tried to write the above without sounding a little bit racist...)
I haven't noticed Chinese - except for my new neighbour family directly across who moved in this summer, and has recently been back to China to spend time with family. So I'd speculate 1st generation, and possibly via Nottingham University and stayed.
Seem like good, quiet, neighbours.
NU has a lot of Chinese students, and campuses in both China (Ningbo) and Malaysia who presumably come here sometimes. The Chinese one has a replica of the Portland Building. 6500 students "based in China", whatever that means. https://www.nottingham.edu.cn/en/index.aspx
Poles, however - we have in spades. My local GP has their instructions in 2 languages - English and Polish.
There’s a Sky journalist who is absolutely obsessed with proving that the babies at Kfar Aza were not beheaded. Instead, they were shot, or maybe had their throats slit
And there does seem some confusion - contradictory reports from soldiers, journos
But he doesn’t realise it’s not a very good look. Like someone angrily shouting “that’s completely wrong, Jimmy Savile only raped 216 children, NOT 407!”
I’ll leave the investigation to the fire brigade, but Twitter has very much already decided what type of car was involved in the incident.
I was in that car park less than a week ago.
If it turns out that of the hundreds of cars there one of the small percentage of EVs caught fire while parked this will significantly add to concerns over their mass adoption. Hundreds of cars destroyed and untold damage to the recently constructed car park - my word this is shocking. I assume no human casualties? - which if so would be lucky.
What of car parks under apartment buildings?
What if the fire started with an ICE vehicle? Should they be banned?
I must admit I hadn't even thought of the EV angle. I was thinking more that this looked like arson - especially after the similar fire in Liverpool. I was wondering if there is a more militant faction of (for example) XR that is taking things into their own hands.
Has anyone got numbers on this? The best I have are that EV fires are very rare, and ICEV fires are more common - but I have nothing very authoritative.
ROSPA did this review some time ago, and risk profiles are different. EVs, aiui, have eg a risk of delayed fires - which sounds like one possible mechanism for an airport parking fire.
If the fire was started by a car (of any design) does the owner's insurance company cop the cost for the damage/destruction of, say, the 1000 other cars in the car park and the rebuilding cost of the car park itself?
I’ll leave the investigation to the fire brigade, but Twitter has very much already decided what type of car was involved in the incident.
Twitter also very much decided what Clarkson's superinjunction was about.
Clarkson Superinjunction?
Good job that Luton Airport has mass transit straight from the railway station, with I think a 30 minute journey from St Pancras (or St Pancreas as we diabetics call it).
On that note, the GLP1 weight loss drugs might have a very large impact in diabetes.
Halting a clinical trial early is either very bad, or (as in this case) very good news indeed.
https://twitter.com/meremrtl/status/1711867548256334171 Novo has halted its FLOW trial, which was evaluating the impact of semaglutide on renal impairment in type 2 diabetes patients with chronic kidney disease. The decision comes after an independent Data Monitoring Committee recommended the early cessation of the trial due to meeting pre-specified efficacy criteria in an interim analysis. This suggests a strong positive outcome and could be a significant catalyst for the stock.
Primary outcome measure: "Time to first occurrence of a composite primary outcome event defined as persistent eGFR decline of greater than or equal to 50 percentage from trial start, reaching ESRD, death from kidney disease or death from cardiovascular disease."
Kidney disease is very costly for the NHS to treat.
There is a massive problem with diabetes drugs right now - or rather with the supply. Now that someone has discovered that they are a good weight loss drug there is a world wide shortage of some of them. All being bought up by fat Americans at 5 times the price that is paid for them as diabetes drugs.
This is from my neighbour who is a diabetes nurse. She is having real issues and having to put people back on insulin because of the shortage.
Yes, many of my diabetic patients are reporting the same about shortages. I suspect it temporary until the manufacturers step up production.
Diabetes services are something that the NHS does better than most countries, with a strong emphasis on prevention of complications, and more systematic coverage of the entire diabetic population. The roll out of electronic glucose monitoring is a good example.
Individuals often get good treatment in other countries, but apart from Scandanavia things are very much more patchy, and in the USA scarily so.
Is it really so important that our leading politicians are a bit of a giggle? It's not what I look for, I must admit, but perhaps I'm an outlier.
I think the answer to that is that humour is a very powerful way of attracting attention and increasing persuasion. Used well, it can be devastating and its absence is a weakness. The only funny thing I can think of about SKS is that he supports Arsenal and even that is not as funny as it used to be.
That's true about humour (and Arsenal). But imo he's ultra serious because he feels the weight and the pressure of his position; on the cusp of power and not (unlike some) possessed of an innate sense of entitlement that it's no more than his due. Once he becomes PM and gets settled in I think he'll relax into it. I know Brown didn't (it was the opposite) but Starmer strikes me as more rounded than Brown and therefore more likely to find the right balance in the job. If I'm right (and I'm pretty confident of this) the lighter humourous side of him will come to the fore and along with the decade of renewal he'll give us all a few laughs.
After three years of the morally incontinent Spaffer I'm quite happy to have a non-bantersaurus PM. It's government, not a panel show.
There’s a Sky journalist who is absolutely obsessed with proving that the babies at Kfar Aza were not beheaded. Instead, they were shot, or maybe had their throats slit
And there does seem some confusion - contradictory reports from soldiers, journos
But he doesn’t realise it’s not a very good look. Like someone angrily shouting “that’s completely wrong, Jimmy Savile only raped 216 children, NOT 407!”
As I said yesterday Jeremy Bowen on the BBC was class on this. Said what he had been told but also said he was not about to go taking the shrouds of the dead to prove or disprove the point.
If the fire was started by a car (of any design) does the owner's insurance company cop the cost for the damage/destruction of, say, the 1000 other cars in the car park and the rebuilding cost of the car park itself?
How will they build 1.5m new homes? In a recent announcement by major house builder Vistry (includes brands Countywide and Bovis) sales were down 28% in the first half and they have decided to hunker down - concentrating their resources on social housing projects and return capital to shareholders. Whilst would be great if all 1.5m new houses were social housing this is unlikely to happen - especially in "new towns" where a mix of housing is required. With interest rates expected to be high for some time sales of new houses for owner occupation will be depressed.
Smash the monopoly/oligopoly of house builders by moving away from our current convoluted planning system which grants entire estates to a single developer to build who can turn on or off construction at will to deliberately manage prices.
Instead move to a Japanese-style system where if land is zoned for housing anyone can build on it without asking any permission first from neighbours or Council or anyone else since permission has already been granted via it being in the right zone.
This must have been how we did it a few decades ago as the estate I live on was built by three different housebuilders.
That's what happened here: there were three different housebuilders for the village. Interestingly, they were not given large zones of the village to develop, leading to all the houses looking the same. Instead, they were given streets, or even different plots on the same street. Until this changed when the last part of the village was built, this led to quite a difference in styles in any one place.
For instance, there are no houses like mine on this street. But if I go three hundred metres away, I can find a couple that are identical.
That must have enormously increased construction costs.
Apparently not, from what I've been told.
Several housebuilders for a large development is common practice. Amongst other things it reduces risk by giving developers a portfolio, and there are specialists in different types of property eg retirement homes, sheltered developments ,medium rise timber frame etc.
I think a big issue here is proposed magic bullet solutions that are already done or doable in the existing system.
The cost point would normally be needing a minimum size of development to justify the overheads, including eg a sales office. If there is a 1500 dwelling development, developers would need areas of perhaps a couple of hundred houses to get nearly all the economies of scale.
Building a large development faster won't normally sell dwellings at a much faster rate, because the determinant is people living close enough to move whilst staying recognisably local for the rest of their lives, schools, family etc. Flitting 100 or 500 miles is a small minority, and - talking to half a dozen developers when I was marketing a piece of land - most buyers come from within easy transport distance.
From running around the new bits of our village that is being built, there are seemingly lots of oriental-looking prospective buyers. And there has been an anecdotal increase in Chinese kids in local schools. Two ex-Hong Kong residents have purchased new houses (I've no probs with that).
Don't know if that's just a phenomena local to here.
(Tried to write the above without sounding a little bit racist...)
I haven't noticed Chinese - except for my new neighbour family directly across who moved in this summer, and has recently been back to China to spend time with family. So I'd speculate 1st generation, and possibly via Nottingham University and stayed.
Seem like good, quiet, neighbours.
NU has a lot of Chinese students, and campuses in both China (Ningbo) and Malaysia who presumably come here sometimes. The Chinese one has a replica of the Portland Building. 6500 students "based in China", whatever that means. https://www.nottingham.edu.cn/en/index.aspx
Poles, however - we have in spades. My local GP has their instructions in 2 languages - English and Polish.
"Poles, however - we have in spades." That's what makes a spade a spade. Else they'd be trowels
Is it really so important that our leading politicians are a bit of a giggle? It's not what I look for, I must admit, but perhaps I'm an outlier.
I think the answer to that is that humour is a very powerful way of attracting attention and increasing persuasion. Used well, it can be devastating and its absence is a weakness. The only funny thing I can think of about SKS is that he supports Arsenal and even that is not as funny as it used to be.
That's true about humour (and Arsenal). But imo he's ultra serious because he feels the weight and the pressure of his position; on the cusp of power and not (unlike some) possessed of an innate sense of entitlement that it's no more than his due. Once he becomes PM and gets settled in I think he'll relax into it. I know Brown didn't (it was the opposite) but Starmer strikes me as more rounded than Brown and therefore more likely to find the right balance in the job. If I'm right (and I'm pretty confident of this) the lighter humourous side of him will come to the fore and along with the decade of renewal he'll give us all a few laughs.
After three years of the morally incontinent Spaffer I'm quite happy to have a non-bantersaurus PM. It's government, not a panel show.
After the pandemic, an unprecedented crisis where the PM was on tv every day giving updates on whether we could leave the house without dropping dead, the next few years are likely to appear calmer even if Liam Gallagher is PM
There’s a Sky journalist who is absolutely obsessed with proving that the babies at Kfar Aza were not beheaded. Instead, they were shot, or maybe had their throats slit
And there does seem some confusion - contradictory reports from soldiers, journos
But he doesn’t realise it’s not a very good look. Like someone angrily shouting “that’s completely wrong, Jimmy Savile only raped 216 children, NOT 407!”
Tangentially, I'm two episodes into the Savile drama. Steve Coogan is uncanny - he is a brilliant impressionist, of course - but it does take a short while to get round the cognitive dissonance of Coogan being a comic actor, playing such a truly devilish human. He gets him bang on though, truly sinister.
Withholding full judgement till I've watched the whole thing though. My instinct is that Savile, like a lot of psychopaths, is actually quite one-dimensional and doesn't quite bear a four hour character study. The real interest is in how his enablers are depicted. As I say - jury out till I've watched it all.
There’s a Sky journalist who is absolutely obsessed with proving that the babies at Kfar Aza were not beheaded. Instead, they were shot, or maybe had their throats slit
And there does seem some confusion - contradictory reports from soldiers, journos
But he doesn’t realise it’s not a very good look. Like someone angrily shouting “that’s completely wrong, Jimmy Savile only raped 216 children, NOT 407!”
As I said yesterday Jeremy Bowen on the BBC was class on this. Said what he had been told but also said he was not about to go taking the shrouds of the dead to prove or disprove the point.
I’ve dug a little deeper
The ambiguity might be - I’m not joking - because only SOME of the babies were beheaded. Not all 40
A reply on X:
“If this is true and Hamas beheaded only some of the 40 babies then we apologise unreservedly. The last thing we’d want to do is cast Hamas in a bad light as having cut off more infant heads than they actually did.”
There’s a Sky journalist who is absolutely obsessed with proving that the babies at Kfar Aza were not beheaded. Instead, they were shot, or maybe had their throats slit
And there does seem some confusion - contradictory reports from soldiers, journos
But he doesn’t realise it’s not a very good look. Like someone angrily shouting “that’s completely wrong, Jimmy Savile only raped 216 children, NOT 407!”
cf: The £350m figure on the bus is a lie! Technically, when you incorporate the rebate, it's only £250m.
I’ll leave the investigation to the fire brigade, but Twitter has very much already decided what type of car was involved in the incident.
Twitter also very much decided what Clarkson's superinjunction was about.
Clarkson Superinjunction?
Good job that Luton Airport has mass transit straight from the railway station, with I think a 30 minute journey from St Pancras (or St Pancreas as we diabetics call it).
On that note, the GLP1 weight loss drugs might have a very large impact in diabetes.
Halting a clinical trial early is either very bad, or (as in this case) very good news indeed.
https://twitter.com/meremrtl/status/1711867548256334171 Novo has halted its FLOW trial, which was evaluating the impact of semaglutide on renal impairment in type 2 diabetes patients with chronic kidney disease. The decision comes after an independent Data Monitoring Committee reThatcommended the early cessation of the trial due to meeting pre-specified efficacy criteria in an interim analysis. This suggests a strong positive outcome and could be a significant catalyst for the stock.
Primary outcome measure: "Time to first occurrence of a composite primary outcome event defined as persistent eGFR decline of greater than or equal to 50 percentage from trial start, reaching ESRD, death from kidney disease or death from cardiovascular disease."
Kidney disease is very costly for the NHS to treat.
There is a massive problem with diabetes drugs right now - or rather with the supply. Now that someone has discovered that they are a good weight loss drug there is a world wide shortage of some of them. All being bought up by fat Americans at 5 times the price that is paid for them as diabetes drugs.
This is from my neighbour who is a diabetes nurse. She is having real issues and having to put people back on insulin because of the shortage.
That I think will be Type 2 Diabetes and GLP - the NHS is already quite good (at least according to my anecdata) at addressing early Type 2, and putting it 'into remission' (ie patients come off the treatment due to diet / exercise changes).
It's ironic that insulin is sometimes used to promote weight GAIN.
On a separate note, developments in blood glucose monitoring are making a big difference too.
You remember the monitoring system that most of us first saw when Theresa May showed her monitoring sensor on her arm in sleeveless dresses? There are now 200k people or so using that system in the UK - the cost-benefit analysis stacked up.
There’s a Sky journalist who is absolutely obsessed with proving that the babies at Kfar Aza were not beheaded. Instead, they were shot, or maybe had their throats slit
And there does seem some confusion - contradictory reports from soldiers, journos
But he doesn’t realise it’s not a very good look. Like someone angrily shouting “that’s completely wrong, Jimmy Savile only raped 216 children, NOT 407!”
Tangentially, I'm two episodes into the Savile drama. Steve Coogan is uncanny - he is a brilliant impressionist, of course - but it does take a short while to get round the cognitive dissonance of Coogan being a comic actor, playing such a truly devilish human. He gets him bang on though, truly sinister.
Withholding full judgement till I've watched the whole thing though. My instinct is that Savile, like a lot of psychopaths, is actually quite one-dimensional and doesn't quite bear a four hour character study. The real interest is in how his enablers are depicted. As I say - jury out till I've watched it all.
I can’t watch it right now. As was said on here last night, the world is already too dark to spend chillaxing hours with a drama about a monster
I’m fascinated by the idea of just giving your money away. Peter Green suggested Fleetwood Mac should do it in the sixties, and the rest of the band refused. He was mentally ill, but on this I think he spoke sense. I’d like to do it but make the excuse that I haven’t got enough yet, when compared to most people on earth I’m fabulously wealthy. Caught in the trap of keeping up with the Jones’s
Billionaire businessman Chuck Feeney who co-founded Duty Free Shoppers chain then gave away his fortune to charity because 'it's more fun to give while you live' dies at rented San Francisco Apartment aged 92 trib.al/naFH1Jy
How will they build 1.5m new homes? In a recent announcement by major house builder Vistry (includes brands Countywide and Bovis) sales were down 28% in the first half and they have decided to hunker down - concentrating their resources on social housing projects and return capital to shareholders. Whilst would be great if all 1.5m new houses were social housing this is unlikely to happen - especially in "new towns" where a mix of housing is required. With interest rates expected to be high for some time sales of new houses for owner occupation will be depressed.
Smash the monopoly/oligopoly of house builders by moving away from our current convoluted planning system which grants entire estates to a single developer to build who can turn on or off construction at will to deliberately manage prices.
Instead move to a Japanese-style system where if land is zoned for housing anyone can build on it without asking any permission first from neighbours or Council or anyone else since permission has already been granted via it being in the right zone.
This must have been how we did it a few decades ago as the estate I live on was built by three different housebuilders.
That's what happened here: there were three different housebuilders for the village. Interestingly, they were not given large zones of the village to develop, leading to all the houses looking the same. Instead, they were given streets, or even different plots on the same street. Until this changed when the last part of the village was built, this led to quite a difference in styles in any one place.
For instance, there are no houses like mine on this street. But if I go three hundred metres away, I can find a couple that are identical.
That must have enormously increased construction costs.
Apparently not, from what I've been told.
Several housebuilders for a large development is common practice. Amongst other things it reduces risk by giving developers a portfolio, and there are specialists in different types of property eg retirement homes, sheltered developments ,medium rise timber frame etc.
I think a big issue here is proposed magic bullet solutions that are already done or doable in the existing system.
The cost point would normally be needing a minimum size of development to justify the overheads, including eg a sales office. If there is a 1500 dwelling development, developers would need areas of perhaps a couple of hundred houses to get nearly all the economies of scale.
Building a large development faster won't normally sell dwellings at a much faster rate, because the determinant is people living close enough to move whilst staying recognisably local for the rest of their lives, schools, family etc. Flitting 100 or 500 miles is a small minority, and - talking to half a dozen developers when I was marketing a piece of land - most buyers come from within easy transport distance.
From running around the new bits of our village that is being built, there are seemingly lots of oriental-looking prospective buyers. And there has been an anecdotal increase in Chinese kids in local schools. Two ex-Hong Kong residents have purchased new houses (I've no probs with that).
Don't know if that's just a phenomena local to here.
(Tried to write the above without sounding a little bit racist...)
I haven't noticed Chinese - except for my new neighbour family directly across who moved in this summer, and has recently been back to China to spend time with family. So I'd speculate 1st generation, and possibly via Nottingham University and stayed.
Seem like good, quiet, neighbours.
NU has a lot of Chinese students, and campuses in both China (Ningbo) and Malaysia who presumably come here sometimes. The Chinese one has a replica of the Portland Building. 6500 students "based in China", whatever that means. https://www.nottingham.edu.cn/en/index.aspx
Poles, however - we have in spades. My local GP has their instructions in 2 languages - English and Polish.
"Poles, however - we have in spades." That's what makes a spade a spade. Else they'd be trowels
There’s a Sky journalist who is absolutely obsessed with proving that the babies at Kfar Aza were not beheaded. Instead, they were shot, or maybe had their throats slit
And there does seem some confusion - contradictory reports from soldiers, journos
But he doesn’t realise it’s not a very good look. Like someone angrily shouting “that’s completely wrong, Jimmy Savile only raped 216 children, NOT 407!”
Tangentially, I'm two episodes into the Savile drama. Steve Coogan is uncanny - he is a brilliant impressionist, of course - but it does take a short while to get round the cognitive dissonance of Coogan being a comic actor, playing such a truly devilish human. He gets him bang on though, truly sinister.
Withholding full judgement till I've watched the whole thing though. My instinct is that Savile, like a lot of psychopaths, is actually quite one-dimensional and doesn't quite bear a four hour character study. The real interest is in how his enablers are depicted. As I say - jury out till I've watched it all.
I've watched it all. It's well-done for sure but what is the point? It is far inferior to Dan Davies's book, In Plain Sight, which is superb.
Cars are an inherently dangerous form of technology as - whether ICE or electric - they have to carry a significant store of energy around the whole time. Far better if most people travelled to the airport by train rather than leaving a potential unstable energy store lying around alongside thousands of others while they jet off on their travels.
I’m fascinated by the idea of just giving your money away. Peter Green suggested Fleetwood Max should do it in the sixties, and the rest of the band refused. He was mentally ill, but on this I think he spoke sense. I’d like to do it but make the excuse that I haven’t got enough yet, when compared to most people on earth I’m fabulously wealthy. Caught in the trap of keeping up with the Jones’s
Billionaire businessman Chuck Feeney who co-founded Duty Free Shoppers chain then gave away his fortune to charity because 'it's more fun to give while you live' dies at rented San Francisco Apartment aged 92 trib.al/naFH1Jy
Is it really so important that our leading politicians are a bit of a giggle? It's not what I look for, I must admit, but perhaps I'm an outlier.
It’s an asset in campaigning to be relatively charismatic. It probably helps in negotiating too. Obviously you are trivialising it as “a bit of a giggle” to downplay it as your man doesn’t have much charisma; luckily enough, neither does his opponent now, so that weakness is nullified.
Yes but campaigning is about getting the job. What kinabalu is talking about is actually doing the job.
Can we really say that the most charismatic PMs of the last 70 years have been the best? Even someone like Thatcher was not exactly the life and soul of the party.
I think the country is ready for boring for a while. Whether they are ready for Labour policies is another matter but we will just have to see how that goes and hope for the best.
I'd be inclined to agree, and yet. The two least charismatic PMs in recent years - Brown and May - weren't exactly a stellar success in the job either.
Thinking about why this might be it's because the job is all about people. Apparently Sunak has his detailed spreadsheets, but that just shows me that he doesn't understand the job.
The PM doesn't do anything directly. They delegate and lead. To get anything done other people have to be persuaded to follow the lead provided. They have to use delegated authority to make appropriate decisions that will achieve the stated objectives set by the PM. They need subordinates who will provide the best and most honest advice.
It's no use having a perfect understanding of an issue, and knowing precisely how to fix it, if you can't persuade others that you're right.
I’ll leave the investigation to the fire brigade, but Twitter has very much already decided what type of car was involved in the incident.
Twitter also very much decided what Clarkson's superinjunction was about.
Clarkson Superinjunction?
Good job that Luton Airport has mass transit straight from the railway station, with I think a 30 minute journey from St Pancras (or St Pancreas as we diabetics call it).
On that note, the GLP1 weight loss drugs might have a very large impact in diabetes.
Halting a clinical trial early is either very bad, or (as in this case) very good news indeed.
https://twitter.com/meremrtl/status/1711867548256334171 Novo has halted its FLOW trial, which was evaluating the impact of semaglutide on renal impairment in type 2 diabetes patients with chronic kidney disease. The decision comes after an independent Data Monitoring Committee reThatcommended the early cessation of the trial due to meeting pre-specified efficacy criteria in an interim analysis. This suggests a strong positive outcome and could be a significant catalyst for the stock.
Primary outcome measure: "Time to first occurrence of a composite primary outcome event defined as persistent eGFR decline of greater than or equal to 50 percentage from trial start, reaching ESRD, death from kidney disease or death from cardiovascular disease."
Kidney disease is very costly for the NHS to treat.
There is a massive problem with diabetes drugs right now - or rather with the supply. Now that someone has discovered that they are a good weight loss drug there is a world wide shortage of some of them. All being bought up by fat Americans at 5 times the price that is paid for them as diabetes drugs.
This is from my neighbour who is a diabetes nurse. She is having real issues and having to put people back on insulin because of the shortage.
That I think will be Type 2 Diabetes and GLP - the NHS is already quite good (at least according to my anecdata) at addressing early Type 2, and putting it 'into remission' (ie patients come off the treatment due to diet / exercise changes).
It's ironic that insulin is sometimes used to promote weight GAIN.
On a separate note, developments in blood glucose monitoring are making a big difference too.
You remember the monitoring system that most of us first saw when Theresa May showed her monitoring sensor on her arm in sleeveless dresses? There are now 200k people or so using that system in the UK - the cost-benefit analysis stacked up.
Yep I am one of those who benefitted from an early warningthat I was 'pre-diabetic' which gave me the opportunity to put things right by losing a lot of weight.
There’s a Sky journalist who is absolutely obsessed with proving that the babies at Kfar Aza were not beheaded. Instead, they were shot, or maybe had their throats slit
And there does seem some confusion - contradictory reports from soldiers, journos
But he doesn’t realise it’s not a very good look. Like someone angrily shouting “that’s completely wrong, Jimmy Savile only raped 216 children, NOT 407!”
Tangentially, I'm two episodes into the Savile drama. Steve Coogan is uncanny - he is a brilliant impressionist, of course - but it does take a short while to get round the cognitive dissonance of Coogan being a comic actor, playing such a truly devilish human. He gets him bang on though, truly sinister.
Withholding full judgement till I've watched the whole thing though. My instinct is that Savile, like a lot of psychopaths, is actually quite one-dimensional and doesn't quite bear a four hour character study. The real interest is in how his enablers are depicted. As I say - jury out till I've watched it all.
I've watched it all. It's well-done for sure but what is the point? It is far inferior to Dan Davies's book, In Plain Sight, which is superb.
How much did the BBC drama touch on the fact, that he was very much in plain sight of many of the BBC management of the time?
I find it totally horrific for the victims, that the BBC would even go there with a drama that they presumably indend to sell worldwide.
There’s a Sky journalist who is absolutely obsessed with proving that the babies at Kfar Aza were not beheaded. Instead, they were shot, or maybe had their throats slit
And there does seem some confusion - contradictory reports from soldiers, journos
But he doesn’t realise it’s not a very good look. Like someone angrily shouting “that’s completely wrong, Jimmy Savile only raped 216 children, NOT 407!”
Tangentially, I'm two episodes into the Savile drama. Steve Coogan is uncanny - he is a brilliant impressionist, of course - but it does take a short while to get round the cognitive dissonance of Coogan being a comic actor, playing such a truly devilish human. He gets him bang on though, truly sinister.
Withholding full judgement till I've watched the whole thing though. My instinct is that Savile, like a lot of psychopaths, is actually quite one-dimensional and doesn't quite bear a four hour character study. The real interest is in how his enablers are depicted. As I say - jury out till I've watched it all.
I can’t watch it right now. As was said on here last night, the world is already too dark to spend chillaxing hours with a drama about a monster
Agree. Perhaps there will be a trend towards reading Jane Austen, Trollope, Barbara Pym and Wodehouse. As Waugh said of the great PGW:
“Mr. Wodehouse's idyllic world can never stale. He will continue to release future generations from captivity that may be more irksome than our own. He has made a world for us to live in and delight in.”
I’m fascinated by the idea of just giving your money away. Peter Green suggested Fleetwood Mac should do it in the sixties, and the rest of the band refused. He was mentally ill, but on this I think he spoke sense. I’d like to do it but make the excuse that I haven’t got enough yet, when compared to most people on earth I’m fabulously wealthy. Caught in the trap of keeping up with the Jones’s
Billionaire businessman Chuck Feeney who co-founded Duty Free Shoppers chain then gave away his fortune to charity because 'it's more fun to give while you live' dies at rented San Francisco Apartment aged 92 trib.al/naFH1Jy
If I ever became that rich I reckon I’d give it away. I’d leave enough to my kids to make sure they’re alright. Give them a head start. But what’s the point in dying with £100m in the bank? Or a billion?
The Luton airport fire demonstrates just how dangerous EVs are. Normal petrol and diesel cars do not have anything flammable - no tanks full of explosive liquids - and so are immune to fire.
Time to Ban EVs. For the children.
When I worked in the oil industry, the safety experts were unanimous. If you tried to invent petrol today, you wouldn’t be allowed to sell it to the public.
H224 - Extremely flammable liquid and vapour. H319 - Causes serious eye irritation. H315 - Causes skin irritation. H340 - May cause genetic defects. H350 - May cause cancer. H361 - Suspected of damaging the unborn child. H304 - May be fatal if swallowed and enters airways. H336 - May cause drowsiness or dizziness.
The Luton airport fire demonstrates just how dangerous EVs are. Normal petrol and diesel cars do not have anything flammable - no tanks full of explosive liquids - and so are immune to fire.
Time to Ban EVs. For the children.
I haven't heard anyone suggest evs be banned, and may I say a rather extreme response to an incident that could have implications for evs and how to ensure safety is addressed and even regulated effectively
And what implications if it was a petrol engined car ?
The car park fire in Liverpool in 2018 destroyed a whole car park full of cars. Started by an LPG vehicle, once temperatures got high enough the fire spread from car to car, with one igniting every 30 seconds at the worst and rivers of flaming fuel spreading the conflagration even further.
So yes. I can understand why the blame is being put on EVs this time. There is a risk they might catch fire and be hard to put out...
The anti-EV hysteria from the right is so bad as to actually be funny.
I’ll leave the investigation to the fire brigade, but Twitter has very much already decided what type of car was involved in the incident.
Twitter also very much decided what Clarkson's superinjunction was about.
Clarkson Superinjunction?
Good job that Luton Airport has mass transit straight from the railway station, with I think a 30 minute journey from St Pancras (or St Pancreas as we diabetics call it).
On that note, the GLP1 weight loss drugs might have a very large impact in diabetes.
Halting a clinical trial early is either very bad, or (as in this case) very good news indeed.
https://twitter.com/meremrtl/status/1711867548256334171 Novo has halted its FLOW trial, which was evaluating the impact of semaglutide on renal impairment in type 2 diabetes patients with chronic kidney disease. The decision comes after an independent Data Monitoring Committee recommended the early cessation of the trial due to meeting pre-specified efficacy criteria in an interim analysis. This suggests a strong positive outcome and could be a significant catalyst for the stock.
Primary outcome measure: "Time to first occurrence of a composite primary outcome event defined as persistent eGFR decline of greater than or equal to 50 percentage from trial start, reaching ESRD, death from kidney disease or death from cardiovascular disease."
Kidney disease is very costly for the NHS to treat.
This might be really good - if the trial evidence shows an overwhelmingly positive effect then they will stop it early once the data is statistically valid so that the placebo group can receive the treatment. Not treating them when you know the treatment is effective would be un-ethical.
There’s also suggestive evidence I’ve seen elsewhere that GLP-1 antagonists are effective against all sorts of addictive behaviour: It’s not just overeating that’s impacted but other things too.
There’s a Sky journalist who is absolutely obsessed with proving that the babies at Kfar Aza were not beheaded. Instead, they were shot, or maybe had their throats slit
And there does seem some confusion - contradictory reports from soldiers, journos
But he doesn’t realise it’s not a very good look. Like someone angrily shouting “that’s completely wrong, Jimmy Savile only raped 216 children, NOT 407!”
Tangentially, I'm two episodes into the Savile drama. Steve Coogan is uncanny - he is a brilliant impressionist, of course - but it does take a short while to get round the cognitive dissonance of Coogan being a comic actor, playing such a truly devilish human. He gets him bang on though, truly sinister.
Withholding full judgement till I've watched the whole thing though. My instinct is that Savile, like a lot of psychopaths, is actually quite one-dimensional and doesn't quite bear a four hour character study. The real interest is in how his enablers are depicted. As I say - jury out till I've watched it all.
I've watched it all. It's well-done for sure but what is the point? It is far inferior to Dan Davies's book, In Plain Sight, which is superb.
How much did the BBC drama touch on the fact, that he was very much in plain sight of many of the BBC management of the time?
I find it totally horrific for the victims, that the BBC would even go there with a drama that they presumably indend to sell worldwide.
Some of the victims were involved in the process of making the drama and it is very much made from their perspective. In the first episode after showing Saviles funeral they had some of the victims speaking.
Just looking at that picture and comparing with the Liverpool car park fire, I was wondering if there's something about the design of the car park that made the more vulnerable. But thinking about it, what's probably caused the trouble is that they were full. A town centre multi-storey is likely to have more gaps that act as fire breaks.
But still, modern multi-storeys do seem to have less headroom.
If this fire was caused by an electric car self combusting then who is going to park an electric car in a multi storey car park or be allowed on a ferry....Or eurotunnel?
The responsibility for Hamas's action lies entirely with Hamas - but this Israeli editorial calls out Netanyahu as an enabler.
https://www.haaretz.com/ty-WRITER/0000017f-da25-d42c-afff-dff7a1c10000 ...His life’s work was to turn the ship of state from the course steered by his predecessors, from Yitzhak Rabin to Ehud Olmert, and make the two-state solution impossible. En route to this goal, he found a partner in Hamas.
“Anyone who wants to thwart the establishment of a Palestinian state has to support bolstering Hamas and transferring money to Hamas,” he told a meeting of his Likud party’s Knesset members in March 2019. “This is part of our strategy – to isolate the Palestinians in Gaza from the Palestinians in the West Bank.”..
It's more likely he enabled by appointing incompetent political cronies and lackies to key positions in the IDF and Mossad, who were asleep at the wheel.
The oped calls that out, too. It's not either/or.
Netanyahu is the worst possible leader for Israel at such a time and has been for a while. If there is anything even remotely good to come out of this I hope it is his departure from the political scene. But even a saint could not ignore what has happened. Hamas have genocidal intent towards Israel and all Jews everywhere. They are 21st century Nazis and must be defeated. If people didn't realise this before now - it has been clearly set out in their speeches and charter for ages - Saturday's massacres should have disabused them.
I posted last night a plan which would allow innocent civilians to escape Gaza while Israel takes steps to defeat Hamas. There is some talk of the US trying to establish just such a humanitarian corridor but I read this morning that Hamas have told Gazans not to try and escape. They do not care about their own people and are perfectly happy for them to be killed so long as they can blame this on Israel. They are utter scum. As are those who excuse, enable and justify them in the West.
Like the ex-leader of the Labour Party and far too many members of the party under him.
Starmer deserves every gold star going for the fact that he has turned the party away from the sewer it had become under Corbyn. Even if he achieves nothing else in his political life that will be to his credit. His speech yesterday showed him to be a serious politician with the flaws and failings of normal politicians. Boring he may be but look at what we have to compare him to at last week's Tory conference.
There’s a Sky journalist who is absolutely obsessed with proving that the babies at Kfar Aza were not beheaded. Instead, they were shot, or maybe had their throats slit
And there does seem some confusion - contradictory reports from soldiers, journos
But he doesn’t realise it’s not a very good look. Like someone angrily shouting “that’s completely wrong, Jimmy Savile only raped 216 children, NOT 407!”
Tangentially, I'm two episodes into the Savile drama. Steve Coogan is uncanny - he is a brilliant impressionist, of course - but it does take a short while to get round the cognitive dissonance of Coogan being a comic actor, playing such a truly devilish human. He gets him bang on though, truly sinister.
Withholding full judgement till I've watched the whole thing though. My instinct is that Savile, like a lot of psychopaths, is actually quite one-dimensional and doesn't quite bear a four hour character study. The real interest is in how his enablers are depicted. As I say - jury out till I've watched it all.
I've watched it all. It's well-done for sure but what is the point? It is far inferior to Dan Davies's book, In Plain Sight, which is superb.
How much did the BBC drama touch on the fact, that he was very much in plain sight of many of the BBC management of the time?
I find it totally horrific for the victims, that the BBC would even go there with a drama that they presumably indend to sell worldwide.
There’s a Sky journalist who is absolutely obsessed with proving that the babies at Kfar Aza were not beheaded. Instead, they were shot, or maybe had their throats slit
And there does seem some confusion - contradictory reports from soldiers, journos
But he doesn’t realise it’s not a very good look. Like someone angrily shouting “that’s completely wrong, Jimmy Savile only raped 216 children, NOT 407!”
Tangentially, I'm two episodes into the Savile drama. Steve Coogan is uncanny - he is a brilliant impressionist, of course - but it does take a short while to get round the cognitive dissonance of Coogan being a comic actor, playing such a truly devilish human. He gets him bang on though, truly sinister.
Withholding full judgement till I've watched the whole thing though. My instinct is that Savile, like a lot of psychopaths, is actually quite one-dimensional and doesn't quite bear a four hour character study. The real interest is in how his enablers are depicted. As I say - jury out till I've watched it all.
I've watched it all. It's well-done for sure but what is the point? It is far inferior to Dan Davies's book, In Plain Sight, which is superb.
How much did the BBC drama touch on the fact, that he was very much in plain sight of many of the BBC management of the time?
I find it totally horrific for the victims, that the BBC would even go there with a drama that they presumably indend to sell worldwide.
It doesn’t shy away from showing the BBC bods not taking concerns seriously, not believing, taking his word so fair play to them.
It’s a very hard watch because they have documentary testimony from a few of his victims topping and tailing each episode but in the bulk it is absolutely grim act after grim act interspersed with his interviews with a biographer etc.
My only problem with it is that I wish someone else had played him because I can’t help just seeing him as some sort of Alan Partridge type character as Coogan plays all Savile’s weird quirks and tics but there is a Partridge-esque element to them which is hard to ignore if you were a fan of that character/programme.
I am no Starmer fan, and even less a Streeting fan, but Mrs Foxy is. After yesterday's speech Labour has her vote.
I live on one of the 7 Tory held seats with a large majority in Leics that encircle the city. On current polling some of these turn improbably red. I will wait for the candidates flyers before deciding but really hard to see the seat as other than Tory hold.
I was in the overspill hall with a first-conference friend. I thought the speech was policy-light, quite stirring at times but a bit long. She was absolutely electrified and says she'll tell all her friends that he's great. I think we veterans sometimes underestimate what exposure to a good speech will do to a newcomer to serious politics.
Anyone know what is happening with Covid booster eligibility?
I thought you had to be over 65 and there is no private option but have seen this:
"There will be a Covid Vaccination clinic running at Tesco Car Park on Saturday 20th March between 12.30pm to 3.30pm. You, or anyone in your household over the age of 18 years, will be able to have your vaccine. There is no need to book an appointment, just turn up."
Is this just for those few who have had no vaccine at all or whether they are referring to boosters?
Just looking at that picture and comparing with the Liverpool car park fire, I was wondering if there's something about the design of the car park that made the more vulnerable. But thinking about it, what's probably caused the trouble is that they were full. A town centre multi-storey is likely to have more gaps that act as fire breaks.
But still, modern multi-storeys do seem to have less headroom.
The other thing that occurs to me is that we've discussed before how cars have become heavier, which also suggests that they're probably having to carry around larger tanks of fuel to move them around. So a full car park might have a lot more explosive material in it then it would have had a few decades ago.
The Luton airport fire demonstrates just how dangerous EVs are. Normal petrol and diesel cars do not have anything flammable - no tanks full of explosive liquids - and so are immune to fire.
Time to Ban EVs. For the children.
When I worked in the oil industry, the safety experts were unanimous. If you tried to invent petrol today, you wouldn’t be allowed to sell it to the public.
H224 - Extremely flammable liquid and vapour. H319 - Causes serious eye irritation. H315 - Causes skin irritation. H340 - May cause genetic defects. H350 - May cause cancer. H361 - Suspected of damaging the unborn child. H304 - May be fatal if swallowed and enters airways. H336 - May cause drowsiness or dizziness.
Also explosive
And to think my parents had me mowing the lawn with a petrol honda from age 10 or something.
Have we noted Mr Starmer's Appeal to "Come and Join Labour" from his speech, to disappointed Conservative voters.
So if you are a Conservative voter who despairs of this, if you look in horror at the descent of your party into the murky waters of populism and conspiracy, with no argument for economic change.
If you feel our country needs a party that conserves.
That fights for our union. Our environment. The rule of law.
Family life. The careful bond between this generation and the next.
Then let me tell you: Britain already has one. And you can join it. It’s this Labour Party.
A further attempt at more centrist, Big Tent, politics?
To marginalise his Corbyn wing further, and more firmly?
Here's Ashcroft with a huge US focus group. Rather a lot of Ashcroft giving his own views and speculation, as he admits at one point, but interesting anyway:
I am no Starmer fan, and even less a Streeting fan, but Mrs Foxy is. After yesterday's speech Labour has her vote.
I live on one of the 7 Tory held seats with a large majority in Leics that encircle the city. On current polling some of these turn improbably red. I will wait for the candidates flyers before deciding but really hard to see the seat as other than Tory hold.
I was in the overspill hall with a first-conference friend. I thought the speech was policy-light, quite stirring at times but a bit long. She was absolutely electrified and says she'll tell all her friends that he's great. I think we veterans sometimes underestimate what exposure to a good speech will do to a newcomer to serious politics.
I grew up watching Kinnock's speeches to congress on TV (yes I was a sad kid). My God, they don't make speakers like him anymore.
If the fire was started by a car (of any design) does the owner's insurance company cop the cost for the damage/destruction of, say, the 1000 other cars in the car park and the rebuilding cost of the car park itself?
This is a huge subject, and answers may take years. But a couple of relevant principles:
The starter of the fire is only liable if there is negligence, or perhaps some other tort, which is its own and large area of law.
An important test for the scope and extent of liability is foreseeability.
An insurer is of course only liable with regard to that which he has taken liability for.
In cases such as this there can be multiple bodies liable. (X is negligent and his car starts a fire. But also Y is negligent/breach of statutory duty because they failed to install a suitable sprinkler system etc). All parties always hope that at least one of those culpable is insured for it.
There’s a Sky journalist who is absolutely obsessed with proving that the babies at Kfar Aza were not beheaded. Instead, they were shot, or maybe had their throats slit
And there does seem some confusion - contradictory reports from soldiers, journos
But he doesn’t realise it’s not a very good look. Like someone angrily shouting “that’s completely wrong, Jimmy Savile only raped 216 children, NOT 407!”
Tangentially, I'm two episodes into the Savile drama. Steve Coogan is uncanny - he is a brilliant impressionist, of course - but it does take a short while to get round the cognitive dissonance of Coogan being a comic actor, playing such a truly devilish human. He gets him bang on though, truly sinister.
Withholding full judgement till I've watched the whole thing though. My instinct is that Savile, like a lot of psychopaths, is actually quite one-dimensional and doesn't quite bear a four hour character study. The real interest is in how his enablers are depicted. As I say - jury out till I've watched it all.
I've watched it all. It's well-done for sure but what is the point? It is far inferior to Dan Davies's book, In Plain Sight, which is superb.
How much did the BBC drama touch on the fact, that he was very much in plain sight of many of the BBC management of the time?
I find it totally horrific for the victims, that the BBC would even go there with a drama that they presumably indend to sell worldwide.
It's made by ITV Studios.
I have met and endured unwanted behaviour by enough sexual creeps in real life not to want to watch a drama about one such. The whole idea seems horrific to me.
The responsibility for Hamas's action lies entirely with Hamas - but this Israeli editorial calls out Netanyahu as an enabler.
https://www.haaretz.com/ty-WRITER/0000017f-da25-d42c-afff-dff7a1c10000 ...His life’s work was to turn the ship of state from the course steered by his predecessors, from Yitzhak Rabin to Ehud Olmert, and make the two-state solution impossible. En route to this goal, he found a partner in Hamas.
“Anyone who wants to thwart the establishment of a Palestinian state has to support bolstering Hamas and transferring money to Hamas,” he told a meeting of his Likud party’s Knesset members in March 2019. “This is part of our strategy – to isolate the Palestinians in Gaza from the Palestinians in the West Bank.”..
It's more likely he enabled by appointing incompetent political cronies and lackies to key positions in the IDF and Mossad, who were asleep at the wheel.
The oped calls that out, too. It's not either/or.
Netanyahu is the worst possible leader for Israel at such a time and has been for a while. If there is anything even remotely good to come out of this I hope it is his departure from the political scene. But even a saint could not ignore what has happened. Hamas have genocidal intent towards Israel and all Jews everywhere. They are 21st century Nazis and must be defeated. If people didn't realise this before now - it has been clearly set out in their speeches and charter for ages - Saturday's massacres should have disabused them.
I posted last night a plan which would allow innocent civilians to escape Gaza while Israel takes steps to defeat Hamas. There is some talk of the US trying to establish just such a humanitarian corridor but I read this morning that Hamas have told Gazans not to try and escape. They do not care about their own people and are perfectly happy for them to be killed so long as they can blame this on Israel. They are utter scum. As are those who excuse, enable and justify them in the West.
Like the ex-leader of the Labour Party and far too many members of the party under him.
Starmer deserves every gold star going for the fact that he has turned the party away from the sewer it had become under Corbyn. Even if he achieves nothing else in his political life that will be to his credit. His speech yesterday showed him to be a serious politician with the flaws and failings of normal politicians. Boring he may be but look at what we have to compare him to at last week's Tory conference.
Sometimes you get organisations whose ideology is just a cover for what they really enjoy doing, murder, torture and rape.
The Khmer Rouge, IS, Sturmbrigade Dirlewanger were of that ilk. So is Hamas.
The Luton airport fire demonstrates just how dangerous EVs are. Normal petrol and diesel cars do not have anything flammable - no tanks full of explosive liquids - and so are immune to fire.
Time to Ban EVs. For the children.
When I worked in the oil industry, the safety experts were unanimous. If you tried to invent petrol today, you wouldn’t be allowed to sell it to the public.
H224 - Extremely flammable liquid and vapour. H319 - Causes serious eye irritation. H315 - Causes skin irritation. H340 - May cause genetic defects. H350 - May cause cancer. H361 - Suspected of damaging the unborn child. H304 - May be fatal if swallowed and enters airways. H336 - May cause drowsiness or dizziness.
Also explosive
Although diesel is probably even more toxic it is at least difficult to set fire to.
Vehicle fires happen but they need to be extinguishable.
Is there such a test as part of the safety regulations? Perhaps there needs to be one.
Comments
I think a big issue here is proposed magic bullet solutions that are already done or doable in the existing system.
The cost point would normally be needing a minimum size of development to justify the overheads, including eg a sales office. If there is a 1500 dwelling development, developers would need areas of perhaps a couple of hundred houses to get nearly all the economies of scale.
Building a large development faster won't normally sell dwellings at a much faster rate, because the determinant is people living close enough to move whilst staying recognisably local for the rest of their lives, schools, family etc. Flitting 100 or 500 miles is a small minority, and - talking to half a dozen developers when I was marketing a piece of land - most buyers come from within easy transport distance.
https://twitter.com/lawofruby/status/1711811412153049333
If it turns out that of the hundreds of cars there one of the small percentage of EVs caught fire while parked this will significantly add to concerns over their mass adoption. Hundreds of cars destroyed and untold damage to the recently constructed car park - my word this is shocking. I assume no human casualties? - which if so would be lucky.
What of car parks under apartment buildings?
These were the polls, search the data tables and you'll find I'm right.
https://www.survation.com/great-expectation-management-will-labour-triumph-in-the-local-elections/
https://twitter.com/omnisis/status/1651957103194406919?s=61&t=81z5QeCAoa-6c8xnJpAGzw
The point is, ladies and gentleman, that boring -- for lack of a better word -- is good.
Boring is right.
Boring works.
Boring clarifies, cuts through, and captures the essence of the Governmental spirit.
Boring, in all of its forms -- Boring in life, boring with money, boring in love, boring knowledge -- has marked the upward surge of Government.
And boring -- you mark my words -- will not only save the Labour party, but that other malfunctioning corporation called the United Kingdom.
(with apologies to Gordon Gekko)
Okay so it doesn't quite work but you get what I mean.
It was vetoed by the security consultant, from Northern Ireland...
Good job that Luton Airport has mass transit straight from the railway station, with I think a 30 minute journey from St Pancras (or St Pancreas as we diabetics call it).
https://www.london-luton.co.uk/luton-dart
Agree about the LVT move though.
Are our police forces trying to put forward a USA-style brand identity? Not sure about that. This is the City of London police. The enforcement is great, but unfortunately the scrote can get the car back. The pound needs to be in Aberdeen.
https://twitter.com/CityPoliceCops/status/1711786432002421062
Apparently 5 people have been taken to hospital with smoke inhalation, including some fire fighters
The chief fire officer said that a car caught fire on the 3rd floor and it rapidly spread to multiple floors and resulting in the partial collapse of the car park.
He also said upto 1500 cars were in the car park at the time
It remains to be seen if an ev was the source of the fire, but there must have been quite a number of evs that did catch fire
This could have wide implications for evs, and reminds me of the 1979 fire in Woolworths in Manchester caused by a damaged electrical cable igniting furniture made from polyurethane foam in which 10 people died which led to the furniture and furnishings fire safety regulations act of 1988
Don't know if that's just a phenomena local to here.
(Tried to write the above without sounding a little bit racist...)
Halting a clinical trial early is either very bad, or (as in this case) very good news indeed.
https://twitter.com/meremrtl/status/1711867548256334171
Novo has halted its FLOW trial, which was evaluating the impact of semaglutide on renal impairment in type 2 diabetes patients with chronic kidney disease. The decision comes after an independent Data Monitoring Committee recommended the early cessation of the trial due to meeting pre-specified efficacy criteria in an interim analysis. This suggests a strong positive outcome and could be a significant catalyst for the stock.
Primary outcome measure: "Time to first occurrence of a composite primary outcome event defined as persistent eGFR decline of greater than or equal to 50 percentage from trial start, reaching ESRD, death from kidney disease or death from cardiovascular disease."
Kidney disease is very costly for the NHS to treat.
Missed the Starmer speech but from what I have seen in clips and reportage the protestor actually helped. The end of the Jezbollah era neatly dragged off the stage as a bemused Starmer stands with actual glitter on his shoulders as he rolls his sleeves up.
When you look at the two conferences - content, tone, number in attendance, and *who* was in attendance - it is clear that this is the last waltz for the Tories and everyone knows it.
The challenge for Starmer is that he has big ambitions (his 5 pledges are huge) and now wants to do things like transform housing. A comprehensive new towns program is something I have been calling for over the last few months as the only obvious solution to the current impasse.
Exactly how we get there will need to be worked out. But we have to have the ambition to fix things like housing - you build nothing by saying that its too difficult or can't be done or its too expensive. Bollocks - Britain was bombed and bankrupt after the end of the war but achieved transformational things. So it can be done. You have to *want* it.
Can we really say that the most charismatic PMs of the last 70 years have been the best? Even someone like Thatcher was not exactly the life and soul of the party.
I think the country is ready for boring for a while. Whether they are ready for Labour policies is another matter but we will just have to see how that goes and hope for the best.
On that score the groucho rule seems to apply to Sunak and SKS
Larry Stroll and friends are about $300m into Aston Martin, and can at least double if not treble their money if they were to sell up now. Not a bad return in five years.
Time to Ban EVs. For the children.
This is from my neighbour who is a diabetes nurse. She is having real issues and having to put people back on insulin because of the shortage.
Boring, maybe - but I'll take 'boring' optimism and ambition over petty small-mindedness any day.
Sleeves up, get cracking. We need a bit of this.
I agree, it’s better that politicians go about their business quietly and competently. I was interested in the relationship between personality and getting elected
ROSPA did this review some time ago, and risk profiles are different. EVs, aiui, have eg a risk of delayed fires - which sounds like one possible mechanism for an airport parking fire.
https://www.rospa.com/media/documents/road-safety/road-observatory/Vehicles-Electric-vehicle-safety.pdf
OTOH some outlets such as GB News and the Daily Mail push scare stories.
On which point, I havent seen much of Anne lately. It was always nice to get her greetings before she started commenting for the day.
Even if this fire didn’t originate with an EV, the presence of them close by may have contributed both to the severity of the blaze, and the inability of firefighters to bring it under control quickly.
I suspect that there needs to be an update to the standards for car park sprinkler systems, to take account of the increasing prevalence of large batteries that can sustain combustion autonomously. Battery fires can’t be put out with foam, CO2, or water, as the batteries themselves contain compounds of oxygen. The only option is to put hundreds of gallons of water on the fire, and wait for things to cool down.
Seem like good, quiet, neighbours.
NU has a lot of Chinese students, and campuses in both China (Ningbo) and Malaysia who presumably come here sometimes. The Chinese one has a replica of the Portland Building. 6500 students "based in China", whatever that means.
https://www.nottingham.edu.cn/en/index.aspx
Poles, however - we have in spades. My local GP has their instructions in 2 languages - English and Polish.
And there does seem some confusion - contradictory reports from soldiers, journos
But he doesn’t realise it’s not a very good look. Like someone angrily shouting “that’s completely wrong, Jimmy Savile only raped 216 children, NOT 407!”
Diabetes services are something that the NHS does better than most countries, with a strong emphasis on prevention of complications, and more systematic coverage of the entire diabetic population. The roll out of electronic glucose monitoring is a good example.
Individuals often get good treatment in other countries, but apart from Scandanavia things are very much more patchy, and in the USA scarily so.
https://www.bellingcat.com/news/2023/10/11/hamas-attacks-israel-bombs-gaza-and-misinformation-surges-online/?utm_source=x
https://www.theguardian.com/us-news/2023/oct/10/aoc-palestinian-rally-new-york
That's what makes a spade a spade. Else they'd be trowels
Withholding full judgement till I've watched the whole thing though. My instinct is that Savile, like a lot of psychopaths, is actually quite one-dimensional and doesn't quite bear a four hour character study. The real interest is in how his enablers are depicted. As I say - jury out till I've watched it all.
The ambiguity might be - I’m not joking - because only SOME of the babies were beheaded. Not all 40
A reply on X:
“If this is true and Hamas beheaded only some of the 40 babies then we apologise unreservedly. The last thing we’d want to do is cast Hamas in a bad light as having cut off more infant heads than they actually did.”
https://x.com/leekern13/status/1711922839769784816?s=46&t=bulOICNH15U6kB0MwE6Lfw
https://lnkd.in/evYENsia
It's ironic that insulin is sometimes used to promote weight GAIN.
On a separate note, developments in blood glucose monitoring are making a big difference too.
You remember the monitoring system that most of us first saw when Theresa May showed her monitoring sensor on her arm in sleeveless dresses? There are now 200k people or so using that system in the UK - the cost-benefit analysis stacked up.
The car park contained an estimated 1,500 cars.
https://twitter.com/BedsFire/status/1712011631725555906
Billionaire businessman Chuck Feeney who co-founded Duty Free Shoppers chain then gave away his fortune to charity because 'it's more fun to give while you live' dies at rented San Francisco Apartment aged 92 trib.al/naFH1Jy
https://x.com/dailymail/status/1711699637344596020?s=46&t=CW4pL-mMpTqsJXCdjW0Z6Q
Thinking about why this might be it's because the job is all about people. Apparently Sunak has his detailed spreadsheets, but that just shows me that he doesn't understand the job.
The PM doesn't do anything directly. They delegate and lead. To get anything done other people have to be persuaded to follow the lead provided. They have to use delegated authority to make appropriate decisions that will achieve the stated objectives set by the PM. They need subordinates who will provide the best and most honest advice.
It's no use having a perfect understanding of an issue, and knowing precisely how to fix it, if you can't persuade others that you're right.
I find it totally horrific for the victims, that the BBC would even go there with a drama that they presumably indend to sell worldwide.
“Mr. Wodehouse's idyllic world can never stale. He will continue to release future generations from captivity that may be more irksome than our own. He has made a world for us to live in and delight in.”
And giving is a positive pleasure
H224 - Extremely flammable liquid and vapour.
H319 - Causes serious eye irritation.
H315 - Causes skin irritation.
H340 - May cause genetic defects.
H350 - May cause cancer.
H361 - Suspected of damaging the unborn child.
H304 - May be fatal if swallowed and enters airways.
H336 - May cause drowsiness or dizziness.
Also explosive
So yes. I can understand why the blame is being put on EVs this time. There is a risk they might catch fire and be hard to put out...
The anti-EV hysteria from the right is so bad as to actually be funny.
There’s also suggestive evidence I’ve seen elsewhere that GLP-1 antagonists are effective against all sorts of addictive behaviour: It’s not just overeating that’s impacted but other things too.
But still, modern multi-storeys do seem to have less headroom.
I posted last night a plan which would allow innocent civilians to escape Gaza while Israel takes steps to defeat Hamas. There is some talk of the US trying to establish just such a humanitarian corridor but I read this morning that Hamas have told Gazans not to try and escape. They do not care about their own people and are perfectly happy for them to be killed so long as they can blame this on Israel. They are utter scum. As are those who excuse, enable and justify them in the West.
Like the ex-leader of the Labour Party and far too many members of the party under him.
Starmer deserves every gold star going for the fact that he has turned the party away from the sewer it had become under Corbyn. Even if he achieves nothing else in his political life that will be to his credit. His speech yesterday showed him to be a serious politician with the flaws and failings of normal politicians. Boring he may be but look at what we have to compare him to at last week's Tory conference.
It’s a very hard watch because they have documentary testimony from a few of his victims topping and tailing each episode but in the bulk it is absolutely grim act after grim act interspersed with his interviews with a biographer etc.
My only problem with it is that I wish someone else had played him because I can’t help just seeing him as some sort of Alan Partridge type character as Coogan plays all Savile’s weird quirks and tics but there is a Partridge-esque element to them which is hard to ignore if you were a fan of that character/programme.
I thought you had to be over 65 and there is no private option but have seen this:
"There will be a Covid Vaccination clinic running at Tesco Car Park on Saturday 20th March between 12.30pm to 3.30pm. You, or anyone in your household over the age of 18 years, will be able to have your vaccine. There is no need to book an appointment, just turn up."
Is this just for those few who have had no vaccine at all or whether they are referring to boosters?
So if you are a Conservative voter who despairs of this, if you look in horror at the descent of your party into the murky waters of populism and conspiracy, with no argument for economic change.
If you feel our country needs a party that conserves.
That fights for our union. Our environment. The rule of law.
Family life. The careful bond between this generation and the next.
Then let me tell you: Britain already has one. And you can join it. It’s this Labour Party.
A further attempt at more centrist, Big Tent, politics?
To marginalise his Corbyn wing further, and more firmly?
https://lordashcroftpolls.com/2023/10/biden-v-trump-why-is-america-heading-for-the-rematch-no-one-seems-to-want/
The starter of the fire is only liable if there is negligence, or perhaps some other tort, which is its own and large area of law.
An important test for the scope and extent of liability is foreseeability.
An insurer is of course only liable with regard to that which he has taken liability for.
In cases such as this there can be multiple bodies liable. (X is negligent and his car starts a fire. But also Y is negligent/breach of statutory duty because they failed to install a suitable sprinkler system etc). All parties always hope that at least one of those culpable is insured for it.
The Khmer Rouge, IS, Sturmbrigade Dirlewanger were of that ilk. So is Hamas.
Vehicle fires happen but they need to be extinguishable.
Is there such a test as part of the safety regulations? Perhaps there needs to be one.