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Things to put on the side of a bus? – politicalbetting.com

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  • HYUFDHYUFD Posts: 122,908
    Farage takes 3rd place in I'm a Celeb
  • HYUFDHYUFD Posts: 122,908

    HYUFD said:

    The arrogance of the Royal Family.

    They send Christmas cards, not with pictures of robins, snowmen or Santa, but with photos of themselves.

    They always have, if you get a card from the Royals you want a festive picture of them on.

    Former PMs like the Blairs also send such personalised cards
    OK, so William in a Santa hat and Kate dressed as an elf.

    But no, just a boring picture of the whole family dressed for Sunday lunch at a Toby Carvery.
    A classy picture of the whole family
  • CatManCatMan Posts: 3,058
    edited December 2023
    carnforth said:

    MattW said:

    Bermuda said:

    Theres also Vivek in the usa. Watch this.

    JUST IN: Vivek Ramaswamy holds up a ‘NIKKI IS CORRUPT’ sign during the Republican debate and shames Haley on stage for being willing to send Americans to die so she can “buy a bigger house.”

    Brutal 🔥

    “I don’t have a woman problem. You have a corruption problem and I think that that's what people need to know. Nikki is corrupt.”

    “This is a woman who will send your kids to die so she can buy a bigger house.”

    https://x.com/CollinRugg/status/1732593214081978586?s=20

    2 in one day! We are spoilt.

    Who's kids has she sent (would she send) to die, where, and how did (would?) she do it?

    How does this translate to corruption and a bigger house?

    Is Ramaswamy performing the Indian "Enough Rope to Hang Myself" trick?
    It was bullshit.

    Basically when she quite as UN ambassador she was $1m in debt. In the next 7 years she went from that position to a Forbes estimate of $8m net assets.

    From disclosure she spent a year on the board of Boeing ($300k), wrote two books (O’Reilly estimated $400k), made 11 paid speeches ($2.3m). She also bought a house for $2.4m but - according to O’Reilly - “there’s no way she could get that large a mortgage”

    He then insinuated she was corrupt because she went straight from being Governor of South Carolina (and giving tax breaks to attract Boeing to the state) to become a director of Boeing. Ignoring the fact that there was a 2 year+ gap between the roles.

    The “sending your kids to war” I guess is based on her being UN ambassador?
    While I agree with your analysis, the Boeing connection IS interesting. Given significant (and strategic) shift in the corporation's operations from . . . wait for it . . . Washington State to South Carolina.

    Which has had so far mixed results for Boeing, with quality-control issues curdling the bean-counters' cream) but mostly positives for the Palmetto State.

    Certainly Boeing bigwings (and boneheads) are appreciative of Nikki Haley's past (non-corrupt) services and her continuing clout in SC politics.

    And her stint as UN Ambassador further enhanced her value.

    All this is FAR from a serious or even semi
    -serious impediment for a POTUS candidate. But as in case of Mitt Romney, this is kind of corporate-government connection that raises eyebrows (as opposed to watering them) and inspires attack ads.
    The move to South Carolina wasn’t really about the tax breaks (nice though they were) - it was because it is a union free state. Boeing thought they could screw the workers but didn’t realise that aircraft manufacturing is harder than just regular assembly line stuff

    (And given Boeing now has 10s of thousands of employees in SC having a senior SC politician on the board makes sense. And it helps that she is a woman and a minority as well. Plus I’m sure she made some interesting contacts in her time as UN ambassador - if anything that’s slightly more concerning that she could move straight from that role to a big defence company)
    "Boeing thought they could screw the workers but didn’t realise that aircraft manufacturing is harder than just regular assembly line stuff."

    Indeed. And pretty freaking remarkable for an AEROSPACE TECHNOLOGY corporation!!!

    Why??? Because Boeing let a pack of over-promoted bean-counters run the show . . . damn near into the ground.

    Today the engineers are (mostly) back in the helm. Which is good news for Boeing AND for airline passengers.
    Despite being an avowed Trainist, I'm worried I might be developing an unhealthy obsession with the new 777-9 (due in service in 2025). I even got the 1:400model already.
    Here's a story to get you back on the (nearly) straight and narrow:

    https://www.theguardian.com/travel/2023/dec/09/europes-geography-kind-of-reshaped-as-paris-berlin-night-train-returns


    Curious lack of french connections here. France - Italy night trains, for example. The link to Spain presumably difficult because of guages.

    And, of course the nightstar link to the UK was aborted before the tunnel even opened. The nightstar stock was built, though. It's now in use in Canada.
    The viability of cross Channel passenger trains is limited by the fact that we insist that you need Airport style security before getting on a Eurostar at St Pancras, where all your luggage is searched, which is pointless, as like ferries that cross the Channel, most cars *aren't* searched before you go on a cross channel vehicle transport train.
  • TimSTimS Posts: 12,984

    MattW said:

    Bermuda said:

    Theres also Vivek in the usa. Watch this.

    JUST IN: Vivek Ramaswamy holds up a ‘NIKKI IS CORRUPT’ sign during the Republican debate and shames Haley on stage for being willing to send Americans to die so she can “buy a bigger house.”

    Brutal 🔥

    “I don’t have a woman problem. You have a corruption problem and I think that that's what people need to know. Nikki is corrupt.”

    “This is a woman who will send your kids to die so she can buy a bigger house.”

    https://x.com/CollinRugg/status/1732593214081978586?s=20

    2 in one day! We are spoilt.

    Who's kids has she sent (would she send) to die, where, and how did (would?) she do it?

    How does this translate to corruption and a bigger house?

    Is Ramaswamy performing the Indian "Enough Rope to Hang Myself" trick?
    It was bullshit.

    Basically when she quite as UN ambassador she was $1m in debt. In the next 7 years she went from that position to a Forbes estimate of $8m net assets.

    From disclosure she spent a year on the board of Boeing ($300k), wrote two books (O’Reilly estimated $400k), made 11 paid speeches ($2.3m). She also bought a house for $2.4m but - according to O’Reilly - “there’s no way she could get that large a mortgage”

    He then insinuated she was corrupt because she went straight from being Governor of South Carolina (and giving tax breaks to attract Boeing to the state) to become a director of Boeing. Ignoring the fact that there was a 2 year+ gap between the roles.

    The “sending your kids to war” I guess is based on her being UN ambassador?
    While I agree with your analysis, the Boeing connection IS interesting. Given significant (and strategic) shift in the corporation's operations from . . . wait for it . . . Washington State to South Carolina.

    Which has had so far mixed results for Boeing, with quality-control issues curdling the bean-counters' cream) but mostly positives for the Palmetto State.

    Certainly Boeing bigwings (and boneheads) are appreciative of Nikki Haley's past (non-corrupt) services and her continuing clout in SC politics.

    And her stint as UN Ambassador further enhanced her value.

    All this is FAR from a serious or even semi
    -serious impediment for a POTUS candidate. But as in case of Mitt Romney, this is kind of corporate-government connection that raises eyebrows (as opposed to watering them) and inspires attack ads.
    The move to South Carolina wasn’t really about the tax breaks (nice though they were) - it was because it is a union free state. Boeing thought they could screw the workers but didn’t realise that aircraft manufacturing is harder than just regular assembly line stuff

    (And given Boeing now has 10s of thousands of employees in SC having a senior SC politician on the board makes sense. And it helps that she is a woman and a minority as well. Plus I’m sure she made some interesting contacts in her time as UN ambassador - if anything that’s slightly more concerning that she could move straight from that role to a big defence company)
    "Boeing thought they could screw the workers but didn’t realise that aircraft manufacturing is harder than just regular assembly line stuff."

    Indeed. And pretty freaking remarkable for an AEROSPACE TECHNOLOGY corporation!!!

    Why??? Because Boeing let a pack of over-promoted bean-counters run the show . . . damn near into the ground.

    Today the engineers are (mostly) back in the helm. Which is good news for Boeing AND for airline passengers.
    Despite being an avowed Trainist, I'm worried I might be developing an unhealthy obsession with the new 777-9 (due in service in 2025). I even got the 1:400model already.
    Here's a story to get you back on the (nearly) straight and narrow:

    https://www.theguardian.com/travel/2023/dec/09/europes-geography-kind-of-reshaped-as-paris-berlin-night-train-returns
    Bah! What's the point of a night train? How can you see the scenery??
    This is a good point. It’s why the best night trains do the boring landscapes overnight and then you awake to great scenery.

    I must admit to this being as much theory as practice. I’ve done 4 night trains: Paris to Florence, Jaipur to Jodhpur, Venice to Paris and London to Fort William (and back Edinburgh to London, which is shit because too short).

    Waking up in the middle of nowhere in Rajastan is magical, and anyway the towns and cities are the highlight. The France-Italy trips do cross the Alps at night but a. you stop at various places and you don’t sleep that much so you see the snow out of the window, b. it’s mostly tunnels anyway. The Caledonian sleeper times itself so you wake around the shores of Loch Lomond and is ideally timed (or would be if I hadn’t traveled in 2020 when they closed the dining car).
  • NigelbNigelb Posts: 71,067

    Mean Girls is a superb film. I am ready to be judged.

    It’s my daughter’s favourite too.

    She’s 11.
    Almost two decades old (damn, time flies).

    Look at the cast - amazing for what was a piece of high class popcorn. The casting director was touched by genius.
  • MattW said:

    Bermuda said:

    Theres also Vivek in the usa. Watch this.

    JUST IN: Vivek Ramaswamy holds up a ‘NIKKI IS CORRUPT’ sign during the Republican debate and shames Haley on stage for being willing to send Americans to die so she can “buy a bigger house.”

    Brutal 🔥

    “I don’t have a woman problem. You have a corruption problem and I think that that's what people need to know. Nikki is corrupt.”

    “This is a woman who will send your kids to die so she can buy a bigger house.”

    https://x.com/CollinRugg/status/1732593214081978586?s=20

    2 in one day! We are spoilt.

    Who's kids has she sent (would she send) to die, where, and how did (would?) she do it?

    How does this translate to corruption and a bigger house?

    Is Ramaswamy performing the Indian "Enough Rope to Hang Myself" trick?
    It was bullshit.

    Basically when she quite as UN ambassador she was $1m in debt. In the next 7 years she went from that position to a Forbes estimate of $8m net assets.

    From disclosure she spent a year on the board of Boeing ($300k), wrote two books (O’Reilly estimated $400k), made 11 paid speeches ($2.3m). She also bought a house for $2.4m but - according to O’Reilly - “there’s no way she could get that large a mortgage”

    He then insinuated she was corrupt because she went straight from being Governor of South Carolina (and giving tax breaks to attract Boeing to the state) to become a director of Boeing. Ignoring the fact that there was a 2 year+ gap between the roles.

    The “sending your kids to war” I guess is based on her being UN ambassador?
    While I agree with your analysis, the Boeing connection IS interesting. Given significant (and strategic) shift in the corporation's operations from . . . wait for it . . . Washington State to South Carolina.

    Which has had so far mixed results for Boeing, with quality-control issues curdling the bean-counters' cream) but mostly positives for the Palmetto State.

    Certainly Boeing bigwings (and boneheads) are appreciative of Nikki Haley's past (non-corrupt) services and her continuing clout in SC politics.

    And her stint as UN Ambassador further enhanced her value.

    All this is FAR from a serious or even semi
    -serious impediment for a POTUS candidate. But as in case of Mitt Romney, this is kind of corporate-government connection that raises eyebrows (as opposed to watering them) and inspires attack ads.
    The move to South Carolina wasn’t really about the tax breaks (nice though they were) - it was because it is a union free state. Boeing thought they could screw the workers but didn’t realise that aircraft manufacturing is harder than just regular assembly line stuff

    (And given Boeing now has 10s of thousands of employees in SC having a senior SC politician on the board makes sense. And it helps that she is a woman and a minority as well. Plus I’m sure she made some interesting contacts in her time as UN ambassador - if anything that’s slightly more concerning that she could move straight from that role to a big defence company)
    "Boeing thought they could screw the workers but didn’t realise that aircraft manufacturing is harder than just regular assembly line stuff."

    Indeed. And pretty freaking remarkable for an AEROSPACE TECHNOLOGY corporation!!!

    Why??? Because Boeing let a pack of over-promoted bean-counters run the show . . . damn near into the ground.

    Today the engineers are (mostly) back in the helm. Which is good news for Boeing AND for airline passengers.
    Despite being an avowed Trainist, I'm worried I might be developing an unhealthy obsession with the new 777-9 (due in service in 2025). I even got the 1:400model already.
    Here's a story to get you back on the (nearly) straight and narrow:

    https://www.theguardian.com/travel/2023/dec/09/europes-geography-kind-of-reshaped-as-paris-berlin-night-train-returns
    Bah! What's the point of a night train? How can you see the scenery??
    Who cares about the scenery? It's what is on the front that matters!

    Or on the back in the case of the Bristol - Glasgow overnight, that used to be banked up the Lickey Incline. A Hoover on the front and a pair of Syphons on the back - happy days!
    Given what hotel prices are in Germany at the moment (and NL and Austria) a night train is effectively free accommodation
  • SandyRentoolSandyRentool Posts: 22,011
    HYUFD said:

    HYUFD said:

    The arrogance of the Royal Family.

    They send Christmas cards, not with pictures of robins, snowmen or Santa, but with photos of themselves.

    They always have, if you get a card from the Royals you want a festive picture of them on.

    Former PMs like the Blairs also send such personalised cards
    OK, so William in a Santa hat and Kate dressed as an elf.

    But no, just a boring picture of the whole family dressed for Sunday lunch at a Toby Carvery.
    A classy picture of the whole family
    Upper classy or middle classy?
  • Community notes are now calling out Elon Musk's daily lies about Ukraine. They will surely be removed soon.
  • TimSTimS Posts: 12,984
    CatMan said:

    carnforth said:

    MattW said:

    Bermuda said:

    Theres also Vivek in the usa. Watch this.

    JUST IN: Vivek Ramaswamy holds up a ‘NIKKI IS CORRUPT’ sign during the Republican debate and shames Haley on stage for being willing to send Americans to die so she can “buy a bigger house.”

    Brutal 🔥

    “I don’t have a woman problem. You have a corruption problem and I think that that's what people need to know. Nikki is corrupt.”

    “This is a woman who will send your kids to die so she can buy a bigger house.”

    https://x.com/CollinRugg/status/1732593214081978586?s=20

    2 in one day! We are spoilt.

    Who's kids has she sent (would she send) to die, where, and how did (would?) she do it?

    How does this translate to corruption and a bigger house?

    Is Ramaswamy performing the Indian "Enough Rope to Hang Myself" trick?
    It was bullshit.

    Basically when she quite as UN ambassador she was $1m in debt. In the next 7 years she went from that position to a Forbes estimate of $8m net assets.

    From disclosure she spent a year on the board of Boeing ($300k), wrote two books (O’Reilly estimated $400k), made 11 paid speeches ($2.3m). She also bought a house for $2.4m but - according to O’Reilly - “there’s no way she could get that large a mortgage”

    He then insinuated she was corrupt because she went straight from being Governor of South Carolina (and giving tax breaks to attract Boeing to the state) to become a director of Boeing. Ignoring the fact that there was a 2 year+ gap between the roles.

    The “sending your kids to war” I guess is based on her being UN ambassador?
    While I agree with your analysis, the Boeing connection IS interesting. Given significant (and strategic) shift in the corporation's operations from . . . wait for it . . . Washington State to South Carolina.

    Which has had so far mixed results for Boeing, with quality-control issues curdling the bean-counters' cream) but mostly positives for the Palmetto State.

    Certainly Boeing bigwings (and boneheads) are appreciative of Nikki Haley's past (non-corrupt) services and her continuing clout in SC politics.

    And her stint as UN Ambassador further enhanced her value.

    All this is FAR from a serious or even semi
    -serious impediment for a POTUS candidate. But as in case of Mitt Romney, this is kind of corporate-government connection that raises eyebrows (as opposed to watering them) and inspires attack ads.
    The move to South Carolina wasn’t really about the tax breaks (nice though they were) - it was because it is a union free state. Boeing thought they could screw the workers but didn’t realise that aircraft manufacturing is harder than just regular assembly line stuff

    (And given Boeing now has 10s of thousands of employees in SC having a senior SC politician on the board makes sense. And it helps that she is a woman and a minority as well. Plus I’m sure she made some interesting contacts in her time as UN ambassador - if anything that’s slightly more concerning that she could move straight from that role to a big defence company)
    "Boeing thought they could screw the workers but didn’t realise that aircraft manufacturing is harder than just regular assembly line stuff."

    Indeed. And pretty freaking remarkable for an AEROSPACE TECHNOLOGY corporation!!!

    Why??? Because Boeing let a pack of over-promoted bean-counters run the show . . . damn near into the ground.

    Today the engineers are (mostly) back in the helm. Which is good news for Boeing AND for airline passengers.
    Despite being an avowed Trainist, I'm worried I might be developing an unhealthy obsession with the new 777-9 (due in service in 2025). I even got the 1:400model already.
    Here's a story to get you back on the (nearly) straight and narrow:

    https://www.theguardian.com/travel/2023/dec/09/europes-geography-kind-of-reshaped-as-paris-berlin-night-train-returns


    Curious lack of french connections here. France - Italy night trains, for example. The link to Spain presumably difficult because of guages.

    And, of course the nightstar link to the UK was aborted before the tunnel even opened. The nightstar stock was built, though. It's now in use in Canada.
    The viability of cross Channel passenger trains is limited by the fact that we insist that you need Airport style security before getting on a Eurostar at St Pancras, where all your luggage is searched, which is pointless, as like ferries that cross the Channel, most cars *aren't* searched before you go on a cross channel vehicle transport.
    Indeed. Car bombs get an easy ride.
  • Tony Blair's Christmas card will never be matched.

    "Oi, you want to fight m8?"
  • Nigelb said:

    algarkirk said:

    IanB2 said:

    Late in the day, today’s Sunday Rawnsley:

    Four successive Tory prime ministers have been and gone, each arriving at Number 10 brandishing promises to deliver a better Britain, each departing a humiliated failure and leaving Britain in a worse place than they found it. Now, in another zoom around the Tory doom loop, a fifth prime minister is struggling to keep his head above water in a raging tempest of division and chaos self-generated by the Conservatives.

    Research recently unveiled by Professor Jane Green, a political scientist at Oxford, suggests that the disintegration of support for the Tories is much less down to ideology than it is about a collapse of trust in their competence.

    On Planet Tory, the struggle over the Rwanda legislation is being waged as if it is existential. Seen from Planet Earth, this is another and especially startling example of their incompetence. Their sole achievement has been to expel from the UK bagloads of taxpayers’ money without anything to show for it.

    It is a rare government that does not commit any blunders and past ones have perpetrated some shockers as well. What marks this one out when you survey the 13-year span of Tory rule is the gobsmacking quantity of their fumbles, foul-ups, flops and fiascos. Every day makes it look more certain that Tory government is destined for the grave. It will be buried under the crushing weight of their sheer, blithering and boundless incompetence.

    I don't think it takes a lot of research to work out that competence is a bigger issue than policy.

    The only people apparently unaware of this is the Tories, as they continue to pursue an utterly fruitless policy of sending Paddington Bear to Rwanda while about 30 million people are worried about getting a appointment to see a GP and the other 30 million are working out how to pay the rent/mortgage.
    I know its fashionable to regard yourself as a victim of something or everything these days but do you really think the entire population is worried about either their housing costs or their access to public services ?
    Non sequitur.
    People are perfectly capable of working out when their government is persistently incompetent. They don’t have the regard themselves as victims to seek a better alternative.
    Certainly.

    And millions of people for whom things are going very well will do so.

    But algarkirk seems to think the entire country is worrying either about access to public services or their housing costs.

    Why is there this need to claim that everything is terrible when its clearly not for most people and never been better for at least a substantial minority ?
  • SandyRentoolSandyRentool Posts: 22,011
    I used to do 7 overnights in a row on Freedom of Scotland Rail Rovers. And never a bed to lie in, just dossing in the seats. Sometimes bailing at Carlisle or half way up the Highland Main Line in the early hours for a connection. That's how to experience overnight train travel, not cosseted in a berth with a fresh duvet and ensuite shower.
  • HYUFDHYUFD Posts: 122,908

    HYUFD said:

    HYUFD said:

    The arrogance of the Royal Family.

    They send Christmas cards, not with pictures of robins, snowmen or Santa, but with photos of themselves.

    They always have, if you get a card from the Royals you want a festive picture of them on.

    Former PMs like the Blairs also send such personalised cards
    OK, so William in a Santa hat and Kate dressed as an elf.

    But no, just a boring picture of the whole family dressed for Sunday lunch at a Toby Carvery.
    A classy picture of the whole family
    Upper classy or middle classy?
    William is upper class, Kate is middle class with a dash of working class. So all class bases covered
  • SandyRentoolSandyRentool Posts: 22,011
    I reckon someone is playing a long game here...
  • StillWatersStillWaters Posts: 8,241

    Mean Girls is a superb film. I am ready to be judged.

    It’s my daughter’s favourite too.

    She’s 11.
    Great taste from an early age. I make no apologies.
    To be fair Rachel McAdams is a great actress (Amanda Seyfried is solid too).
  • Andy_JSAndy_JS Posts: 32,549
    algarkirk said:

    IanB2 said:

    Late in the day, today’s Sunday Rawnsley:

    Four successive Tory prime ministers have been and gone, each arriving at Number 10 brandishing promises to deliver a better Britain, each departing a humiliated failure and leaving Britain in a worse place than they found it. Now, in another zoom around the Tory doom loop, a fifth prime minister is struggling to keep his head above water in a raging tempest of division and chaos self-generated by the Conservatives.

    Research recently unveiled by Professor Jane Green, a political scientist at Oxford, suggests that the disintegration of support for the Tories is much less down to ideology than it is about a collapse of trust in their competence.

    On Planet Tory, the struggle over the Rwanda legislation is being waged as if it is existential. Seen from Planet Earth, this is another and especially startling example of their incompetence. Their sole achievement has been to expel from the UK bagloads of taxpayers’ money without anything to show for it.

    It is a rare government that does not commit any blunders and past ones have perpetrated some shockers as well. What marks this one out when you survey the 13-year span of Tory rule is the gobsmacking quantity of their fumbles, foul-ups, flops and fiascos. Every day makes it look more certain that Tory government is destined for the grave. It will be buried under the crushing weight of their sheer, blithering and boundless incompetence.

    I don't think it takes a lot of research to work out that competence is a bigger issue than policy.

    The only people apparently unaware of this is the Tories, as they continue to pursue an utterly fruitless policy of sending Paddington Bear to Rwanda while about 30 million people are worried about getting a appointment to see a GP and the other 30 million are working out how to pay the rent/mortgage.
    Paddington Bear?
  • MattW said:

    Bermuda said:

    Theres also Vivek in the usa. Watch this.

    JUST IN: Vivek Ramaswamy holds up a ‘NIKKI IS CORRUPT’ sign during the Republican debate and shames Haley on stage for being willing to send Americans to die so she can “buy a bigger house.”

    Brutal 🔥

    “I don’t have a woman problem. You have a corruption problem and I think that that's what people need to know. Nikki is corrupt.”

    “This is a woman who will send your kids to die so she can buy a bigger house.”

    https://x.com/CollinRugg/status/1732593214081978586?s=20

    2 in one day! We are spoilt.

    Who's kids has she sent (would she send) to die, where, and how did (would?) she do it?

    How does this translate to corruption and a bigger house?

    Is Ramaswamy performing the Indian "Enough Rope to Hang Myself" trick?
    It was bullshit.

    Basically when she quite as UN ambassador she was $1m in debt. In the next 7 years she went from that position to a Forbes estimate of $8m net assets.

    From disclosure she spent a year on the board of Boeing ($300k), wrote two books (O’Reilly estimated $400k), made 11 paid speeches ($2.3m). She also bought a house for $2.4m but - according to O’Reilly - “there’s no way she could get that large a mortgage”

    He then insinuated she was corrupt because she went straight from being Governor of South Carolina (and giving tax breaks to attract Boeing to the state) to become a director of Boeing. Ignoring the fact that there was a 2 year+ gap between the roles.

    The “sending your kids to war” I guess is based on her being UN ambassador?
    While I agree with your analysis, the Boeing connection IS interesting. Given significant (and strategic) shift in the corporation's operations from . . . wait for it . . . Washington State to South Carolina.

    Which has had so far mixed results for Boeing, with quality-control issues curdling the bean-counters' cream) but mostly positives for the Palmetto State.

    Certainly Boeing bigwings (and boneheads) are appreciative of Nikki Haley's past (non-corrupt) services and her continuing clout in SC politics.

    And her stint as UN Ambassador further enhanced her value.

    All this is FAR from a serious or even semi
    -serious impediment for a POTUS candidate. But as in case of Mitt Romney, this is kind of corporate-government connection that raises eyebrows (as opposed to watering them) and inspires attack ads.
    The move to South Carolina wasn’t really about the tax breaks (nice though they were) - it was because it is a union free state. Boeing thought they could screw the workers but didn’t realise that aircraft manufacturing is harder than just regular assembly line stuff

    (And given Boeing now has 10s of thousands of employees in SC having a senior SC politician on the board makes sense. And it helps that she is a woman and a minority as well. Plus I’m sure she made some interesting contacts in her time as UN ambassador - if anything that’s slightly more concerning that she could move straight from that role to a big defence company)
    "Boeing thought they could screw the workers but didn’t realise that aircraft manufacturing is harder than just regular assembly line stuff."

    Indeed. And pretty freaking remarkable for an AEROSPACE TECHNOLOGY corporation!!!

    Why??? Because Boeing let a pack of over-promoted bean-counters run the show . . . damn near into the ground.

    Today the engineers are (mostly) back in the helm. Which is good news for Boeing AND for airline passengers.
    Despite being an avowed Trainist, I'm worried I might be developing an unhealthy obsession with the new 777-9 (due in service in 2025). I even got the 1:400model already.
    SO you'd rather call yourself/be called a trainist than a trainer?

    Makes sense to me! Though feel that trainite is more reflective of a real railroad fan(atic).

    How about railhead? Trackwack? Alogosideriniophile?
  • TimSTimS Posts: 12,984

    I used to do 7 overnights in a row on Freedom of Scotland Rail Rovers. And never a bed to lie in, just dossing in the seats. Sometimes bailing at Carlisle or half way up the Highland Main Line in the early hours for a connection. That's how to experience overnight train travel, not cosseted in a berth with a fresh duvet and ensuite shower.

    7 overnights in a row? Where on earth were you actually going?
  • ydoethurydoethur Posts: 71,373
    HYUFD said:

    Farage takes 3rd place in I'm a Celeb

    He always was terrible at elections.
  • Foxy said:

    algarkirk said:

    IanB2 said:

    Late in the day, today’s Sunday Rawnsley:

    Four successive Tory prime ministers have been and gone, each arriving at Number 10 brandishing promises to deliver a better Britain, each departing a humiliated failure and leaving Britain in a worse place than they found it. Now, in another zoom around the Tory doom loop, a fifth prime minister is struggling to keep his head above water in a raging tempest of division and chaos self-generated by the Conservatives.

    Research recently unveiled by Professor Jane Green, a political scientist at Oxford, suggests that the disintegration of support for the Tories is much less down to ideology than it is about a collapse of trust in their competence.

    On Planet Tory, the struggle over the Rwanda legislation is being waged as if it is existential. Seen from Planet Earth, this is another and especially startling example of their incompetence. Their sole achievement has been to expel from the UK bagloads of taxpayers’ money without anything to show for it.

    It is a rare government that does not commit any blunders and past ones have perpetrated some shockers as well. What marks this one out when you survey the 13-year span of Tory rule is the gobsmacking quantity of their fumbles, foul-ups, flops and fiascos. Every day makes it look more certain that Tory government is destined for the grave. It will be buried under the crushing weight of their sheer, blithering and boundless incompetence.

    I don't think it takes a lot of research to work out that competence is a bigger issue than policy.

    The only people apparently unaware of this is the Tories, as they continue to pursue an utterly fruitless policy of sending Paddington Bear to Rwanda while about 30 million people are worried about getting a appointment to see a GP and the other 30 million are working out how to pay the rent/mortgage.
    Yebbut if they send a few hapless refugees to Rwanda all that will be fixed, shirley?
    If that actually happens, a Tory victory is then conditional on:

    1) a few deportations then "Stopping the Boats"

    2) that then overriding all other considerations in voters mins.

    I would price that as:

    Evens on deportations actually happening.
    10/1 on stopping the boats
    10/1 on that being the primary factor in voters minds.

    So Sunak has bet the house on a 200/1 shot, with no back up plan.

    It doesn't seem wise to me.
    It's a poor bet, sure.

    But Sunak is pretty much trapped. Walk away from the Rwanda policy and he brings the wrath of the right on himself. So he has to continue pushing it.

    In betting terms, its the ante- he has to place the bet, even though it's an expensive bet at lousy odds. The alternative is to walk away, and so far Rishi isn't prepared to do that.
  • MattW said:

    Bermuda said:

    Theres also Vivek in the usa. Watch this.

    JUST IN: Vivek Ramaswamy holds up a ‘NIKKI IS CORRUPT’ sign during the Republican debate and shames Haley on stage for being willing to send Americans to die so she can “buy a bigger house.”

    Brutal 🔥

    “I don’t have a woman problem. You have a corruption problem and I think that that's what people need to know. Nikki is corrupt.”

    “This is a woman who will send your kids to die so she can buy a bigger house.”

    https://x.com/CollinRugg/status/1732593214081978586?s=20

    2 in one day! We are spoilt.

    Who's kids has she sent (would she send) to die, where, and how did (would?) she do it?

    How does this translate to corruption and a bigger house?

    Is Ramaswamy performing the Indian "Enough Rope to Hang Myself" trick?
    It was bullshit.

    Basically when she quite as UN ambassador she was $1m in debt. In the next 7 years she went from that position to a Forbes estimate of $8m net assets.

    From disclosure she spent a year on the board of Boeing ($300k), wrote two books (O’Reilly estimated $400k), made 11 paid speeches ($2.3m). She also bought a house for $2.4m but - according to O’Reilly - “there’s no way she could get that large a mortgage”

    He then insinuated she was corrupt because she went straight from being Governor of South Carolina (and giving tax breaks to attract Boeing to the state) to become a director of Boeing. Ignoring the fact that there was a 2 year+ gap between the roles.

    The “sending your kids to war” I guess is based on her being UN ambassador?
    While I agree with your analysis, the Boeing connection IS interesting. Given significant (and strategic) shift in the corporation's operations from . . . wait for it . . . Washington State to South Carolina.

    Which has had so far mixed results for Boeing, with quality-control issues curdling the bean-counters' cream) but mostly positives for the Palmetto State.

    Certainly Boeing bigwings (and boneheads) are appreciative of Nikki Haley's past (non-corrupt) services and her continuing clout in SC politics.

    And her stint as UN Ambassador further enhanced her value.

    All this is FAR from a serious or even semi
    -serious impediment for a POTUS candidate. But as in case of Mitt Romney, this is kind of corporate-government connection that raises eyebrows (as opposed to watering them) and inspires attack ads.
    The move to South Carolina wasn’t really about the tax breaks (nice though they were) - it was because it is a union free state. Boeing thought they could screw the workers but didn’t realise that aircraft manufacturing is harder than just regular assembly line stuff

    (And given Boeing now has 10s of thousands of employees in SC having a senior SC politician on the board makes sense. And it helps that she is a woman and a minority as well. Plus I’m sure she made some interesting contacts in her time as UN ambassador - if anything that’s slightly more concerning that she could move straight from that role to a big defence company)
    "Boeing thought they could screw the workers but didn’t realise that aircraft manufacturing is harder than just regular assembly line stuff."

    Indeed. And pretty freaking remarkable for an AEROSPACE TECHNOLOGY corporation!!!

    Why??? Because Boeing let a pack of over-promoted bean-counters run the show . . . damn near into the ground.

    Today the engineers are (mostly) back in the helm. Which is good news for Boeing AND for airline passengers.
    Despite being an avowed Trainist, I'm worried I might be developing an unhealthy obsession with the new 777-9 (due in service in 2025). I even got the 1:400model already.
    Here's a story to get you back on the (nearly) straight and narrow:

    https://www.theguardian.com/travel/2023/dec/09/europes-geography-kind-of-reshaped-as-paris-berlin-night-train-returns
    Bah! What's the point of a night train? How can you see the scenery??
    "What's the point of a night train?"

    To experience something similar to the night train ride portrayed in "North By Northwest"?

    Hopefully with NO stopping to see Mount Rushmore!
  • HYUFDHYUFD Posts: 122,908
    ydoethur said:

    HYUFD said:

    Farage takes 3rd place in I'm a Celeb

    He always was terrible at elections.
    Mind you he did beat most of the contestants to get to tonight's final (and he won the Brexit referendum and 2019 and 2014 European elections of course)
  • CatManCatMan Posts: 3,058
    TimS said:

    CatMan said:

    carnforth said:

    MattW said:

    Bermuda said:

    Theres also Vivek in the usa. Watch this.

    JUST IN: Vivek Ramaswamy holds up a ‘NIKKI IS CORRUPT’ sign during the Republican debate and shames Haley on stage for being willing to send Americans to die so she can “buy a bigger house.”

    Brutal 🔥

    “I don’t have a woman problem. You have a corruption problem and I think that that's what people need to know. Nikki is corrupt.”

    “This is a woman who will send your kids to die so she can buy a bigger house.”

    https://x.com/CollinRugg/status/1732593214081978586?s=20

    2 in one day! We are spoilt.

    Who's kids has she sent (would she send) to die, where, and how did (would?) she do it?

    How does this translate to corruption and a bigger house?

    Is Ramaswamy performing the Indian "Enough Rope to Hang Myself" trick?
    It was bullshit.

    Basically when she quite as UN ambassador she was $1m in debt. In the next 7 years she went from that position to a Forbes estimate of $8m net assets.

    From disclosure she spent a year on the board of Boeing ($300k), wrote two books (O’Reilly estimated $400k), made 11 paid speeches ($2.3m). She also bought a house for $2.4m but - according to O’Reilly - “there’s no way she could get that large a mortgage”

    He then insinuated she was corrupt because she went straight from being Governor of South Carolina (and giving tax breaks to attract Boeing to the state) to become a director of Boeing. Ignoring the fact that there was a 2 year+ gap between the roles.

    The “sending your kids to war” I guess is based on her being UN ambassador?
    While I agree with your analysis, the Boeing connection IS interesting. Given significant (and strategic) shift in the corporation's operations from . . . wait for it . . . Washington State to South Carolina.

    Which has had so far mixed results for Boeing, with quality-control issues curdling the bean-counters' cream) but mostly positives for the Palmetto State.

    Certainly Boeing bigwings (and boneheads) are appreciative of Nikki Haley's past (non-corrupt) services and her continuing clout in SC politics.

    And her stint as UN Ambassador further enhanced her value.

    All this is FAR from a serious or even semi
    -serious impediment for a POTUS candidate. But as in case of Mitt Romney, this is kind of corporate-government connection that raises eyebrows (as opposed to watering them) and inspires attack ads.
    The move to South Carolina wasn’t really about the tax breaks (nice though they were) - it was because it is a union free state. Boeing thought they could screw the workers but didn’t realise that aircraft manufacturing is harder than just regular assembly line stuff

    (And given Boeing now has 10s of thousands of employees in SC having a senior SC politician on the board makes sense. And it helps that she is a woman and a minority as well. Plus I’m sure she made some interesting contacts in her time as UN ambassador - if anything that’s slightly more concerning that she could move straight from that role to a big defence company)
    "Boeing thought they could screw the workers but didn’t realise that aircraft manufacturing is harder than just regular assembly line stuff."

    Indeed. And pretty freaking remarkable for an AEROSPACE TECHNOLOGY corporation!!!

    Why??? Because Boeing let a pack of over-promoted bean-counters run the show . . . damn near into the ground.

    Today the engineers are (mostly) back in the helm. Which is good news for Boeing AND for airline passengers.
    Despite being an avowed Trainist, I'm worried I might be developing an unhealthy obsession with the new 777-9 (due in service in 2025). I even got the 1:400model already.
    Here's a story to get you back on the (nearly) straight and narrow:

    https://www.theguardian.com/travel/2023/dec/09/europes-geography-kind-of-reshaped-as-paris-berlin-night-train-returns


    Curious lack of french connections here. France - Italy night trains, for example. The link to Spain presumably difficult because of guages.

    And, of course the nightstar link to the UK was aborted before the tunnel even opened. The nightstar stock was built, though. It's now in use in Canada.
    The viability of cross Channel passenger trains is limited by the fact that we insist that you need Airport style security before getting on a Eurostar at St Pancras, where all your luggage is searched, which is pointless, as like ferries that cross the Channel, most cars *aren't* searched before you go on a cross channel vehicle transport.
    Indeed. Car bombs get an easy ride.
    Lol, yes. And if you really want to plant a bomb in a rail tunnel under lots of water without any security checks at all, the Severn Tunnel is available.
  • StillWatersStillWaters Posts: 8,241

    HYUFD said:

    HYUFD said:

    The arrogance of the Royal Family.

    They send Christmas cards, not with pictures of robins, snowmen or Santa, but with photos of themselves.

    They always have, if you get a card from the Royals you want a festive picture of them on.

    Former PMs like the Blairs also send such personalised cards
    OK, so William in a Santa hat and Kate dressed as an elf.

    But no, just a boring picture of the whole family dressed for Sunday lunch at a Toby Carvery.
    A classy picture of the whole family
    Upper classy or middle classy?
    Middle upper-middle class.
  • ydoethurydoethur Posts: 71,373

    MattW said:

    Bermuda said:

    Theres also Vivek in the usa. Watch this.

    JUST IN: Vivek Ramaswamy holds up a ‘NIKKI IS CORRUPT’ sign during the Republican debate and shames Haley on stage for being willing to send Americans to die so she can “buy a bigger house.”

    Brutal 🔥

    “I don’t have a woman problem. You have a corruption problem and I think that that's what people need to know. Nikki is corrupt.”

    “This is a woman who will send your kids to die so she can buy a bigger house.”

    https://x.com/CollinRugg/status/1732593214081978586?s=20

    2 in one day! We are spoilt.

    Who's kids has she sent (would she send) to die, where, and how did (would?) she do it?

    How does this translate to corruption and a bigger house?

    Is Ramaswamy performing the Indian "Enough Rope to Hang Myself" trick?
    It was bullshit.

    Basically when she quite as UN ambassador she was $1m in debt. In the next 7 years she went from that position to a Forbes estimate of $8m net assets.

    From disclosure she spent a year on the board of Boeing ($300k), wrote two books (O’Reilly estimated $400k), made 11 paid speeches ($2.3m). She also bought a house for $2.4m but - according to O’Reilly - “there’s no way she could get that large a mortgage”

    He then insinuated she was corrupt because she went straight from being Governor of South Carolina (and giving tax breaks to attract Boeing to the state) to become a director of Boeing. Ignoring the fact that there was a 2 year+ gap between the roles.

    The “sending your kids to war” I guess is based on her being UN ambassador?
    While I agree with your analysis, the Boeing connection IS interesting. Given significant (and strategic) shift in the corporation's operations from . . . wait for it . . . Washington State to South Carolina.

    Which has had so far mixed results for Boeing, with quality-control issues curdling the bean-counters' cream) but mostly positives for the Palmetto State.

    Certainly Boeing bigwings (and boneheads) are appreciative of Nikki Haley's past (non-corrupt) services and her continuing clout in SC politics.

    And her stint as UN Ambassador further enhanced her value.

    All this is FAR from a serious or even semi
    -serious impediment for a POTUS candidate. But as in case of Mitt Romney, this is kind of corporate-government connection that raises eyebrows (as opposed to watering them) and inspires attack ads.
    The move to South Carolina wasn’t really about the tax breaks (nice though they were) - it was because it is a union free state. Boeing thought they could screw the workers but didn’t realise that aircraft manufacturing is harder than just regular assembly line stuff

    (And given Boeing now has 10s of thousands of employees in SC having a senior SC politician on the board makes sense. And it helps that she is a woman and a minority as well. Plus I’m sure she made some interesting contacts in her time as UN ambassador - if anything that’s slightly more concerning that she could move straight from that role to a big defence company)
    "Boeing thought they could screw the workers but didn’t realise that aircraft manufacturing is harder than just regular assembly line stuff."

    Indeed. And pretty freaking remarkable for an AEROSPACE TECHNOLOGY corporation!!!

    Why??? Because Boeing let a pack of over-promoted bean-counters run the show . . . damn near into the ground.

    Today the engineers are (mostly) back in the helm. Which is good news for Boeing AND for airline passengers.
    Despite being an avowed Trainist, I'm worried I might be developing an unhealthy obsession with the new 777-9 (due in service in 2025). I even got the 1:400model already.
    Here's a story to get you back on the (nearly) straight and narrow:

    https://www.theguardian.com/travel/2023/dec/09/europes-geography-kind-of-reshaped-as-paris-berlin-night-train-returns
    Bah! What's the point of a night train? How can you see the scenery??
    "What's the point of a night train?"

    To experience something similar to the night train ride portrayed in "North By Northwest"?

    Hopefully with NO stopping to see Mount Rushmore!
    Did you get Grants for that kind of travel?
  • SandyRentoolSandyRentool Posts: 22,011
    TimS said:

    I used to do 7 overnights in a row on Freedom of Scotland Rail Rovers. And never a bed to lie in, just dossing in the seats. Sometimes bailing at Carlisle or half way up the Highland Main Line in the early hours for a connection. That's how to experience overnight train travel, not cosseted in a berth with a fresh duvet and ensuite shower.

    7 overnights in a row? Where on earth were you actually going?
    Travelling around Scotland.
  • TimSTimS Posts: 12,984
    edited December 2023
    One thing there isn’t is high speed overnight trains. Something to hope for in future. It’s about 1,800 miles from London to Istanbul. At the TGV speed of 180mph that’s 10 hours. Add a couple of hours for stops, slowing into cities, the tunnel etc. Settle in at St Pancras for a 9pm departure via the Chunnel, arrive 9 or 10am in Istanbul after a refreshing night’s sleep.
  • carnforthcarnforth Posts: 4,579
    CatMan said:

    carnforth said:

    MattW said:

    Bermuda said:

    Theres also Vivek in the usa. Watch this.

    JUST IN: Vivek Ramaswamy holds up a ‘NIKKI IS CORRUPT’ sign during the Republican debate and shames Haley on stage for being willing to send Americans to die so she can “buy a bigger house.”

    Brutal 🔥

    “I don’t have a woman problem. You have a corruption problem and I think that that's what people need to know. Nikki is corrupt.”

    “This is a woman who will send your kids to die so she can buy a bigger house.”

    https://x.com/CollinRugg/status/1732593214081978586?s=20

    2 in one day! We are spoilt.

    Who's kids has she sent (would she send) to die, where, and how did (would?) she do it?

    How does this translate to corruption and a bigger house?

    Is Ramaswamy performing the Indian "Enough Rope to Hang Myself" trick?
    It was bullshit.

    Basically when she quite as UN ambassador she was $1m in debt. In the next 7 years she went from that position to a Forbes estimate of $8m net assets.

    From disclosure she spent a year on the board of Boeing ($300k), wrote two books (O’Reilly estimated $400k), made 11 paid speeches ($2.3m). She also bought a house for $2.4m but - according to O’Reilly - “there’s no way she could get that large a mortgage”

    He then insinuated she was corrupt because she went straight from being Governor of South Carolina (and giving tax breaks to attract Boeing to the state) to become a director of Boeing. Ignoring the fact that there was a 2 year+ gap between the roles.

    The “sending your kids to war” I guess is based on her being UN ambassador?
    While I agree with your analysis, the Boeing connection IS interesting. Given significant (and strategic) shift in the corporation's operations from . . . wait for it . . . Washington State to South Carolina.

    Which has had so far mixed results for Boeing, with quality-control issues curdling the bean-counters' cream) but mostly positives for the Palmetto State.

    Certainly Boeing bigwings (and boneheads) are appreciative of Nikki Haley's past (non-corrupt) services and her continuing clout in SC politics.

    And her stint as UN Ambassador further enhanced her value.

    All this is FAR from a serious or even semi
    -serious impediment for a POTUS candidate. But as in case of Mitt Romney, this is kind of corporate-government connection that raises eyebrows (as opposed to watering them) and inspires attack ads.
    The move to South Carolina wasn’t really about the tax breaks (nice though they were) - it was because it is a union free state. Boeing thought they could screw the workers but didn’t realise that aircraft manufacturing is harder than just regular assembly line stuff

    (And given Boeing now has 10s of thousands of employees in SC having a senior SC politician on the board makes sense. And it helps that she is a woman and a minority as well. Plus I’m sure she made some interesting contacts in her time as UN ambassador - if anything that’s slightly more concerning that she could move straight from that role to a big defence company)
    "Boeing thought they could screw the workers but didn’t realise that aircraft manufacturing is harder than just regular assembly line stuff."

    Indeed. And pretty freaking remarkable for an AEROSPACE TECHNOLOGY corporation!!!

    Why??? Because Boeing let a pack of over-promoted bean-counters run the show . . . damn near into the ground.

    Today the engineers are (mostly) back in the helm. Which is good news for Boeing AND for airline passengers.
    Despite being an avowed Trainist, I'm worried I might be developing an unhealthy obsession with the new 777-9 (due in service in 2025). I even got the 1:400model already.
    Here's a story to get you back on the (nearly) straight and narrow:

    https://www.theguardian.com/travel/2023/dec/09/europes-geography-kind-of-reshaped-as-paris-berlin-night-train-returns


    Curious lack of french connections here. France - Italy night trains, for example. The link to Spain presumably difficult because of guages.

    And, of course the nightstar link to the UK was aborted before the tunnel even opened. The nightstar stock was built, though. It's now in use in Canada.
    The viability of cross Channel passenger trains is limited by the fact that we insist that you need Airport style security before getting on a Eurostar at St Pancras, where all your luggage is searched, which is pointless, as like ferries that cross the Channel, most cars *aren't* searched before you go on a cross channel vehicle transport train.
    Not pointless at all. Blowing up the tunnel is vastly worse than blowing up one ferry.

    The nightstar was cancelled due to cheap flights, by all accounts.
  • MattW said:

    Bermuda said:

    Theres also Vivek in the usa. Watch this.

    JUST IN: Vivek Ramaswamy holds up a ‘NIKKI IS CORRUPT’ sign during the Republican debate and shames Haley on stage for being willing to send Americans to die so she can “buy a bigger house.”

    Brutal 🔥

    “I don’t have a woman problem. You have a corruption problem and I think that that's what people need to know. Nikki is corrupt.”

    “This is a woman who will send your kids to die so she can buy a bigger house.”

    https://x.com/CollinRugg/status/1732593214081978586?s=20

    2 in one day! We are spoilt.

    Who's kids has she sent (would she send) to die, where, and how did (would?) she do it?

    How does this translate to corruption and a bigger house?

    Is Ramaswamy performing the Indian "Enough Rope to Hang Myself" trick?
    It was bullshit.

    Basically when she quite as UN ambassador she was $1m in debt. In the next 7 years she went from that position to a Forbes estimate of $8m net assets.

    From disclosure she spent a year on the board of Boeing ($300k), wrote two books (O’Reilly estimated $400k), made 11 paid speeches ($2.3m). She also bought a house for $2.4m but - according to O’Reilly - “there’s no way she could get that large a mortgage”

    He then insinuated she was corrupt because she went straight from being Governor of South Carolina (and giving tax breaks to attract Boeing to the state) to become a director of Boeing. Ignoring the fact that there was a 2 year+ gap between the roles.

    The “sending your kids to war” I guess is based on her being UN ambassador?
    While I agree with your analysis, the Boeing connection IS interesting. Given significant (and strategic) shift in the corporation's operations from . . . wait for it . . . Washington State to South Carolina.

    Which has had so far mixed results for Boeing, with quality-control issues curdling the bean-counters' cream) but mostly positives for the Palmetto State.

    Certainly Boeing bigwings (and boneheads) are appreciative of Nikki Haley's past (non-corrupt) services and her continuing clout in SC politics.

    And her stint as UN Ambassador further enhanced her value.

    All this is FAR from a serious or even semi
    -serious impediment for a POTUS candidate. But as in case of Mitt Romney, this is kind of corporate-government connection that raises eyebrows (as opposed to watering them) and inspires attack ads.
    The move to South Carolina wasn’t really about the tax breaks (nice though they were) - it was because it is a union free state. Boeing thought they could screw the workers but didn’t realise that aircraft manufacturing is harder than just regular assembly line stuff

    (And given Boeing now has 10s of thousands of employees in SC having a senior SC politician on the board makes sense. And it helps that she is a woman and a minority as well. Plus I’m sure she made some interesting contacts in her time as UN ambassador - if anything that’s slightly more concerning that she could move straight from that role to a big defence company)
    "Boeing thought they could screw the workers but didn’t realise that aircraft manufacturing is harder than just regular assembly line stuff."

    Indeed. And pretty freaking remarkable for an AEROSPACE TECHNOLOGY corporation!!!

    Why??? Because Boeing let a pack of over-promoted bean-counters run the show . . . damn near into the ground.

    Today the engineers are (mostly) back in the helm. Which is good news for Boeing AND for airline passengers.
    Despite being an avowed Trainist, I'm worried I might be developing an unhealthy obsession with the new 777-9 (due in service in 2025). I even got the 1:400model already.
    Here's a story to get you back on the (nearly) straight and narrow:

    https://www.theguardian.com/travel/2023/dec/09/europes-geography-kind-of-reshaped-as-paris-berlin-night-train-returns
    Bah! What's the point of a night train? How can you see the scenery??
    Who cares about the scenery? It's what is on the front that matters!

    Or on the back in the case of the Bristol - Glasgow overnight, that used to be banked up the Lickey Incline. A Hoover on the front and a pair of Syphons on the back - happy days!
    Given what hotel prices are in Germany at the moment (and NL and Austria) a night train is effectively free accommodation
    The mini-cabins look good for solo travellers. The Main in Seat 61 reports paying €60 Hamburg-Munich overnight https://www.seat61.com/trains-and-routes/nightjet-new-generation.htm
  • FoxyFoxy Posts: 48,631
    TimS said:

    MattW said:

    Bermuda said:

    Theres also Vivek in the usa. Watch this.

    JUST IN: Vivek Ramaswamy holds up a ‘NIKKI IS CORRUPT’ sign during the Republican debate and shames Haley on stage for being willing to send Americans to die so she can “buy a bigger house.”

    Brutal 🔥

    “I don’t have a woman problem. You have a corruption problem and I think that that's what people need to know. Nikki is corrupt.”

    “This is a woman who will send your kids to die so she can buy a bigger house.”

    https://x.com/CollinRugg/status/1732593214081978586?s=20

    2 in one day! We are spoilt.

    Who's kids has she sent (would she send) to die, where, and how did (would?) she do it?

    How does this translate to corruption and a bigger house?

    Is Ramaswamy performing the Indian "Enough Rope to Hang Myself" trick?
    It was bullshit.

    Basically when she quite as UN ambassador she was $1m in debt. In the next 7 years she went from that position to a Forbes estimate of $8m net assets.

    From disclosure she spent a year on the board of Boeing ($300k), wrote two books (O’Reilly estimated $400k), made 11 paid speeches ($2.3m). She also bought a house for $2.4m but - according to O’Reilly - “there’s no way she could get that large a mortgage”

    He then insinuated she was corrupt because she went straight from being Governor of South Carolina (and giving tax breaks to attract Boeing to the state) to become a director of Boeing. Ignoring the fact that there was a 2 year+ gap between the roles.

    The “sending your kids to war” I guess is based on her being UN ambassador?
    While I agree with your analysis, the Boeing connection IS interesting. Given significant (and strategic) shift in the corporation's operations from . . . wait for it . . . Washington State to South Carolina.

    Which has had so far mixed results for Boeing, with quality-control issues curdling the bean-counters' cream) but mostly positives for the Palmetto State.

    Certainly Boeing bigwings (and boneheads) are appreciative of Nikki Haley's past (non-corrupt) services and her continuing clout in SC politics.

    And her stint as UN Ambassador further enhanced her value.

    All this is FAR from a serious or even semi
    -serious impediment for a POTUS candidate. But as in case of Mitt Romney, this is kind of corporate-government connection that raises eyebrows (as opposed to watering them) and inspires attack ads.
    The move to South Carolina wasn’t really about the tax breaks (nice though they were) - it was because it is a union free state. Boeing thought they could screw the workers but didn’t realise that aircraft manufacturing is harder than just regular assembly line stuff

    (And given Boeing now has 10s of thousands of employees in SC having a senior SC politician on the board makes sense. And it helps that she is a woman and a minority as well. Plus I’m sure she made some interesting contacts in her time as UN ambassador - if anything that’s slightly more concerning that she could move straight from that role to a big defence company)
    "Boeing thought they could screw the workers but didn’t realise that aircraft manufacturing is harder than just regular assembly line stuff."

    Indeed. And pretty freaking remarkable for an AEROSPACE TECHNOLOGY corporation!!!

    Why??? Because Boeing let a pack of over-promoted bean-counters run the show . . . damn near into the ground.

    Today the engineers are (mostly) back in the helm. Which is good news for Boeing AND for airline passengers.
    Despite being an avowed Trainist, I'm worried I might be developing an unhealthy obsession with the new 777-9 (due in service in 2025). I even got the 1:400model already.
    Here's a story to get you back on the (nearly) straight and narrow:

    https://www.theguardian.com/travel/2023/dec/09/europes-geography-kind-of-reshaped-as-paris-berlin-night-train-returns
    Bah! What's the point of a night train? How can you see the scenery??
    This is a good point. It’s why the best night trains do the boring landscapes overnight and then you awake to great scenery.

    I must admit to this being as much theory as practice. I’ve done 4 night trains: Paris to Florence, Jaipur to Jodhpur, Venice to Paris and London to Fort William (and back Edinburgh to London, which is shit because too short).

    Waking up in the middle of nowhere in Rajastan is magical, and anyway the towns and cities are the highlight. The France-Italy trips do cross the Alps at night but a. you stop at various places and you don’t sleep that much so you see the snow out of the window, b. it’s mostly tunnels anyway. The Caledonian sleeper times itself so you wake around the shores of Loch Lomond and is ideally timed (or would be if I hadn’t traveled in 2020 when they closed the dining car).
    I have done a fair few night trains, as did several on each of 2 interrail holidays in the Eighties, including the laughably named "Acropolis Express" that took 40 hours to get from Venice to Athens (scheduled 36) when we didn't get a seat until past the Greek border as the train was full of Yougoslav soldiers heading home, very stinky and drunk.

    On my honeymoon We took the Mombassa to Nairobi night train, which was an unrestored imperial relic. A bit shopworn but fabulously atmospheric, with a colonial style 5 course meal served on British East Africa Railways China and silverware. Watching giraffes from the train as we passed through the game park was quite some approach to Nairobi. A great railway museum next to the station too. Mrs Foxy puts up with a lot!

    Also the Butterworth Malaysia to Bangkok night sleeper, which was very comfy.

    Both were in 1989-90. Not sure if they still run.
  • Sunil_PrasannanSunil_Prasannan Posts: 51,820
    edited December 2023
    TimS said:

    MattW said:

    Bermuda said:

    Theres also Vivek in the usa. Watch this.

    JUST IN: Vivek Ramaswamy holds up a ‘NIKKI IS CORRUPT’ sign during the Republican debate and shames Haley on stage for being willing to send Americans to die so she can “buy a bigger house.”

    Brutal 🔥

    “I don’t have a woman problem. You have a corruption problem and I think that that's what people need to know. Nikki is corrupt.”

    “This is a woman who will send your kids to die so she can buy a bigger house.”

    https://x.com/CollinRugg/status/1732593214081978586?s=20

    2 in one day! We are spoilt.

    Who's kids has she sent (would she send) to die, where, and how did (would?) she do it?

    How does this translate to corruption and a bigger house?

    Is Ramaswamy performing the Indian "Enough Rope to Hang Myself" trick?
    It was bullshit.

    Basically when she quite as UN ambassador she was $1m in debt. In the next 7 years she went from that position to a Forbes estimate of $8m net assets.

    From disclosure she spent a year on the board of Boeing ($300k), wrote two books (O’Reilly estimated $400k), made 11 paid speeches ($2.3m). She also bought a house for $2.4m but - according to O’Reilly - “there’s no way she could get that large a mortgage”

    He then insinuated she was corrupt because she went straight from being Governor of South Carolina (and giving tax breaks to attract Boeing to the state) to become a director of Boeing. Ignoring the fact that there was a 2 year+ gap between the roles.

    The “sending your kids to war” I guess is based on her being UN ambassador?
    While I agree with your analysis, the Boeing connection IS interesting. Given significant (and strategic) shift in the corporation's operations from . . . wait for it . . . Washington State to South Carolina.

    Which has had so far mixed results for Boeing, with quality-control issues curdling the bean-counters' cream) but mostly positives for the Palmetto State.

    Certainly Boeing bigwings (and boneheads) are appreciative of Nikki Haley's past (non-corrupt) services and her continuing clout in SC politics.

    And her stint as UN Ambassador further enhanced her value.

    All this is FAR from a serious or even semi
    -serious impediment for a POTUS candidate. But as in case of Mitt Romney, this is kind of corporate-government connection that raises eyebrows (as opposed to watering them) and inspires attack ads.
    The move to South Carolina wasn’t really about the tax breaks (nice though they were) - it was because it is a union free state. Boeing thought they could screw the workers but didn’t realise that aircraft manufacturing is harder than just regular assembly line stuff

    (And given Boeing now has 10s of thousands of employees in SC having a senior SC politician on the board makes sense. And it helps that she is a woman and a minority as well. Plus I’m sure she made some interesting contacts in her time as UN ambassador - if anything that’s slightly more concerning that she could move straight from that role to a big defence company)
    "Boeing thought they could screw the workers but didn’t realise that aircraft manufacturing is harder than just regular assembly line stuff."

    Indeed. And pretty freaking remarkable for an AEROSPACE TECHNOLOGY corporation!!!

    Why??? Because Boeing let a pack of over-promoted bean-counters run the show . . . damn near into the ground.

    Today the engineers are (mostly) back in the helm. Which is good news for Boeing AND for airline passengers.
    Despite being an avowed Trainist, I'm worried I might be developing an unhealthy obsession with the new 777-9 (due in service in 2025). I even got the 1:400model already.
    Here's a story to get you back on the (nearly) straight and narrow:

    https://www.theguardian.com/travel/2023/dec/09/europes-geography-kind-of-reshaped-as-paris-berlin-night-train-returns
    Bah! What's the point of a night train? How can you see the scenery??
    This is a good point. It’s why the best night trains do the boring landscapes overnight and then you awake to great scenery.

    I must admit to this being as much theory as practice. I’ve done 4 night trains: Paris to Florence, Jaipur to Jodhpur, Venice to Paris and London to Fort William (and back Edinburgh to London, which is shit because too short).

    Waking up in the middle of nowhere in Rajastan is magical, and anyway the towns and cities are the highlight. The France-Italy trips do cross the Alps at night but a. you stop at various places and you don’t sleep that much so you see the snow out of the window, b. it’s mostly tunnels anyway. The Caledonian sleeper times itself so you wake around the shores of Loch Lomond and is ideally timed (or would be if I hadn’t traveled in 2020 when they closed the dining car).
    I did the whole of the "normal" National Rail network in GB during daylight hours, with only two "rarities" done in darkness - the Sleaford Avoider four years back when coming back from a ride on the Gainsborough-Brigg-Barnetby route, and in 2014 the Stechford to Aston line completely by accident after working late at Warwick Uni, and getting the last train back from Coventry to my digs in Brum (which happened to go via Aston and Perry Bar to get to New Street - I wondered why we passed Villa Park!). Winchburgh junction to Dalmeny was just about in twilight when I did it in 2018!
  • carnforthcarnforth Posts: 4,579
    TimS said:

    One there there isn’t is high speed overnight trains. Something to hope for in future. It’s about 1,800 miles from London to Istanbul. At the TGV speed of 180mph that’s 10 hours. Add a couple of hours for stops, slowing into cities, the tunnel etc. Settle in at St Pancras for a 9pm departure via the Chunnel, arrive 9 or 10am in Istanbul after a refreshing night’s sleep.

    Rather unambitious! Build a bridge from Russia to Alaska and sort out that pesky Darien gap, and we can have London to Rio.
  • SandyRentoolSandyRentool Posts: 22,011
    carnforth said:

    CatMan said:

    carnforth said:

    MattW said:

    Bermuda said:

    Theres also Vivek in the usa. Watch this.

    JUST IN: Vivek Ramaswamy holds up a ‘NIKKI IS CORRUPT’ sign during the Republican debate and shames Haley on stage for being willing to send Americans to die so she can “buy a bigger house.”

    Brutal 🔥

    “I don’t have a woman problem. You have a corruption problem and I think that that's what people need to know. Nikki is corrupt.”

    “This is a woman who will send your kids to die so she can buy a bigger house.”

    https://x.com/CollinRugg/status/1732593214081978586?s=20

    2 in one day! We are spoilt.

    Who's kids has she sent (would she send) to die, where, and how did (would?) she do it?

    How does this translate to corruption and a bigger house?

    Is Ramaswamy performing the Indian "Enough Rope to Hang Myself" trick?
    It was bullshit.

    Basically when she quite as UN ambassador she was $1m in debt. In the next 7 years she went from that position to a Forbes estimate of $8m net assets.

    From disclosure she spent a year on the board of Boeing ($300k), wrote two books (O’Reilly estimated $400k), made 11 paid speeches ($2.3m). She also bought a house for $2.4m but - according to O’Reilly - “there’s no way she could get that large a mortgage”

    He then insinuated she was corrupt because she went straight from being Governor of South Carolina (and giving tax breaks to attract Boeing to the state) to become a director of Boeing. Ignoring the fact that there was a 2 year+ gap between the roles.

    The “sending your kids to war” I guess is based on her being UN ambassador?
    While I agree with your analysis, the Boeing connection IS interesting. Given significant (and strategic) shift in the corporation's operations from . . . wait for it . . . Washington State to South Carolina.

    Which has had so far mixed results for Boeing, with quality-control issues curdling the bean-counters' cream) but mostly positives for the Palmetto State.

    Certainly Boeing bigwings (and boneheads) are appreciative of Nikki Haley's past (non-corrupt) services and her continuing clout in SC politics.

    And her stint as UN Ambassador further enhanced her value.

    All this is FAR from a serious or even semi
    -serious impediment for a POTUS candidate. But as in case of Mitt Romney, this is kind of corporate-government connection that raises eyebrows (as opposed to watering them) and inspires attack ads.
    The move to South Carolina wasn’t really about the tax breaks (nice though they were) - it was because it is a union free state. Boeing thought they could screw the workers but didn’t realise that aircraft manufacturing is harder than just regular assembly line stuff

    (And given Boeing now has 10s of thousands of employees in SC having a senior SC politician on the board makes sense. And it helps that she is a woman and a minority as well. Plus I’m sure she made some interesting contacts in her time as UN ambassador - if anything that’s slightly more concerning that she could move straight from that role to a big defence company)
    "Boeing thought they could screw the workers but didn’t realise that aircraft manufacturing is harder than just regular assembly line stuff."

    Indeed. And pretty freaking remarkable for an AEROSPACE TECHNOLOGY corporation!!!

    Why??? Because Boeing let a pack of over-promoted bean-counters run the show . . . damn near into the ground.

    Today the engineers are (mostly) back in the helm. Which is good news for Boeing AND for airline passengers.
    Despite being an avowed Trainist, I'm worried I might be developing an unhealthy obsession with the new 777-9 (due in service in 2025). I even got the 1:400model already.
    Here's a story to get you back on the (nearly) straight and narrow:

    https://www.theguardian.com/travel/2023/dec/09/europes-geography-kind-of-reshaped-as-paris-berlin-night-train-returns


    Curious lack of french connections here. France - Italy night trains, for example. The link to Spain presumably difficult because of guages.

    And, of course the nightstar link to the UK was aborted before the tunnel even opened. The nightstar stock was built, though. It's now in use in Canada.
    The viability of cross Channel passenger trains is limited by the fact that we insist that you need Airport style security before getting on a Eurostar at St Pancras, where all your luggage is searched, which is pointless, as like ferries that cross the Channel, most cars *aren't* searched before you go on a cross channel vehicle transport train.
    Not pointless at all. Blowing up the tunnel is vastly worse than blowing up one ferry.

    The nightstar was cancelled due to cheap flights, by all accounts.
    That's what did for the regional Eurostars.
  • TimSTimS Posts: 12,984

    TimS said:

    I used to do 7 overnights in a row on Freedom of Scotland Rail Rovers. And never a bed to lie in, just dossing in the seats. Sometimes bailing at Carlisle or half way up the Highland Main Line in the early hours for a connection. That's how to experience overnight train travel, not cosseted in a berth with a fresh duvet and ensuite shower.

    7 overnights in a row? Where on earth were you actually going?
    Travelling around Scotland.
    Never realised there were that many overnighters (and presumably aren’t these days).
  • CatManCatMan Posts: 3,058
    carnforth said:

    CatMan said:

    carnforth said:

    MattW said:

    Bermuda said:

    Theres also Vivek in the usa. Watch this.

    JUST IN: Vivek Ramaswamy holds up a ‘NIKKI IS CORRUPT’ sign during the Republican debate and shames Haley on stage for being willing to send Americans to die so she can “buy a bigger house.”

    Brutal 🔥

    “I don’t have a woman problem. You have a corruption problem and I think that that's what people need to know. Nikki is corrupt.”

    “This is a woman who will send your kids to die so she can buy a bigger house.”

    https://x.com/CollinRugg/status/1732593214081978586?s=20

    2 in one day! We are spoilt.

    Who's kids has she sent (would she send) to die, where, and how did (would?) she do it?

    How does this translate to corruption and a bigger house?

    Is Ramaswamy performing the Indian "Enough Rope to Hang Myself" trick?
    It was bullshit.

    Basically when she quite as UN ambassador she was $1m in debt. In the next 7 years she went from that position to a Forbes estimate of $8m net assets.

    From disclosure she spent a year on the board of Boeing ($300k), wrote two books (O’Reilly estimated $400k), made 11 paid speeches ($2.3m). She also bought a house for $2.4m but - according to O’Reilly - “there’s no way she could get that large a mortgage”

    He then insinuated she was corrupt because she went straight from being Governor of South Carolina (and giving tax breaks to attract Boeing to the state) to become a director of Boeing. Ignoring the fact that there was a 2 year+ gap between the roles.

    The “sending your kids to war” I guess is based on her being UN ambassador?
    While I agree with your analysis, the Boeing connection IS interesting. Given significant (and strategic) shift in the corporation's operations from . . . wait for it . . . Washington State to South Carolina.

    Which has had so far mixed results for Boeing, with quality-control issues curdling the bean-counters' cream) but mostly positives for the Palmetto State.

    Certainly Boeing bigwings (and boneheads) are appreciative of Nikki Haley's past (non-corrupt) services and her continuing clout in SC politics.

    And her stint as UN Ambassador further enhanced her value.

    All this is FAR from a serious or even semi
    -serious impediment for a POTUS candidate. But as in case of Mitt Romney, this is kind of corporate-government connection that raises eyebrows (as opposed to watering them) and inspires attack ads.
    The move to South Carolina wasn’t really about the tax breaks (nice though they were) - it was because it is a union free state. Boeing thought they could screw the workers but didn’t realise that aircraft manufacturing is harder than just regular assembly line stuff

    (And given Boeing now has 10s of thousands of employees in SC having a senior SC politician on the board makes sense. And it helps that she is a woman and a minority as well. Plus I’m sure she made some interesting contacts in her time as UN ambassador - if anything that’s slightly more concerning that she could move straight from that role to a big defence company)
    "Boeing thought they could screw the workers but didn’t realise that aircraft manufacturing is harder than just regular assembly line stuff."

    Indeed. And pretty freaking remarkable for an AEROSPACE TECHNOLOGY corporation!!!

    Why??? Because Boeing let a pack of over-promoted bean-counters run the show . . . damn near into the ground.

    Today the engineers are (mostly) back in the helm. Which is good news for Boeing AND for airline passengers.
    Despite being an avowed Trainist, I'm worried I might be developing an unhealthy obsession with the new 777-9 (due in service in 2025). I even got the 1:400model already.
    Here's a story to get you back on the (nearly) straight and narrow:

    https://www.theguardian.com/travel/2023/dec/09/europes-geography-kind-of-reshaped-as-paris-berlin-night-train-returns


    Curious lack of french connections here. France - Italy night trains, for example. The link to Spain presumably difficult because of guages.

    And, of course the nightstar link to the UK was aborted before the tunnel even opened. The nightstar stock was built, though. It's now in use in Canada.
    The viability of cross Channel passenger trains is limited by the fact that we insist that you need Airport style security before getting on a Eurostar at St Pancras, where all your luggage is searched, which is pointless, as like ferries that cross the Channel, most cars *aren't* searched before you go on a cross channel vehicle transport train.
    Not pointless at all. Blowing up the tunnel is vastly worse than blowing up one ferry.

    The nightstar was cancelled due to cheap flights, by all accounts.
    Yes, but as I said, most cars that go through the Tunnel aren't searched (because it's totally impractical). They only do random searches, exactly like cars that go on the ferry. So if you're a terrorist that wants to blow up the Channel Tunnel, book a ticket on LeShuttle, place the bomb in the boot, and there's a 99% chance that you'll be successful.
  • NigelbNigelb Posts: 71,067
    .

    MattW said:

    Bermuda said:

    Theres also Vivek in the usa. Watch this.

    JUST IN: Vivek Ramaswamy holds up a ‘NIKKI IS CORRUPT’ sign during the Republican debate and shames Haley on stage for being willing to send Americans to die so she can “buy a bigger house.”

    Brutal 🔥

    “I don’t have a woman problem. You have a corruption problem and I think that that's what people need to know. Nikki is corrupt.”

    “This is a woman who will send your kids to die so she can buy a bigger house.”

    https://x.com/CollinRugg/status/1732593214081978586?s=20

    2 in one day! We are spoilt.

    Who's kids has she sent (would she send) to die, where, and how did (would?) she do it?

    How does this translate to corruption and a bigger house?

    Is Ramaswamy performing the Indian "Enough Rope to Hang Myself" trick?
    It was bullshit.

    Basically when she quite as UN ambassador she was $1m in debt. In the next 7 years she went from that position to a Forbes estimate of $8m net assets.

    From disclosure she spent a year on the board of Boeing ($300k), wrote two books (O’Reilly estimated $400k), made 11 paid speeches ($2.3m). She also bought a house for $2.4m but - according to O’Reilly - “there’s no way she could get that large a mortgage”

    He then insinuated she was corrupt because she went straight from being Governor of South Carolina (and giving tax breaks to attract Boeing to the state) to become a director of Boeing. Ignoring the fact that there was a 2 year+ gap between the roles.

    The “sending your kids to war” I guess is based on her being UN ambassador?
    While I agree with your analysis, the Boeing connection IS interesting. Given significant (and strategic) shift in the corporation's operations from . . . wait for it . . . Washington State to South Carolina.

    Which has had so far mixed results for Boeing, with quality-control issues curdling the bean-counters' cream) but mostly positives for the Palmetto State.

    Certainly Boeing bigwings (and boneheads) are appreciative of Nikki Haley's past (non-corrupt) services and her continuing clout in SC politics.

    And her stint as UN Ambassador further enhanced her value.

    All this is FAR from a serious or even semi
    -serious impediment for a POTUS candidate. But as in case of Mitt Romney, this is kind of corporate-government connection that raises eyebrows (as opposed to watering them) and inspires attack ads.
    The move to South Carolina wasn’t really about the tax breaks (nice though they were) - it was because it is a union free state. Boeing thought they could screw the workers but didn’t realise that aircraft manufacturing is harder than just regular assembly line stuff

    (And given Boeing now has 10s of thousands of employees in SC having a senior SC politician on the board makes sense. And it helps that she is a woman and a minority as well. Plus I’m sure she made some interesting contacts in her time as UN ambassador - if anything that’s slightly more concerning that she could move straight from that role to a big defence company)
    "Boeing thought they could screw the workers but didn’t realise that aircraft manufacturing is harder than just regular assembly line stuff."

    Indeed. And pretty freaking remarkable for an AEROSPACE TECHNOLOGY corporation!!!

    Why??? Because Boeing let a pack of over-promoted bean-counters run the show . . . damn near into the ground.

    Today the engineers are (mostly) back in the helm. Which is good news for Boeing AND for airline passengers.
    Despite being an avowed Trainist, I'm worried I might be developing an unhealthy obsession with the new 777-9 (due in service in 2025). I even got the 1:400model already.
    SO you'd rather call yourself/be called a trainist than a trainer?

    Makes sense to me! Though feel that trainite is more reflective of a real railroad fan(atic).

    How about railhead? Trackwack? Alogosideriniophile?
    Sunil is locomotivated.
  • FoxyFoxy Posts: 48,631
    Andy_JS said:

    algarkirk said:

    IanB2 said:

    Late in the day, today’s Sunday Rawnsley:

    Four successive Tory prime ministers have been and gone, each arriving at Number 10 brandishing promises to deliver a better Britain, each departing a humiliated failure and leaving Britain in a worse place than they found it. Now, in another zoom around the Tory doom loop, a fifth prime minister is struggling to keep his head above water in a raging tempest of division and chaos self-generated by the Conservatives.

    Research recently unveiled by Professor Jane Green, a political scientist at Oxford, suggests that the disintegration of support for the Tories is much less down to ideology than it is about a collapse of trust in their competence.

    On Planet Tory, the struggle over the Rwanda legislation is being waged as if it is existential. Seen from Planet Earth, this is another and especially startling example of their incompetence. Their sole achievement has been to expel from the UK bagloads of taxpayers’ money without anything to show for it.

    It is a rare government that does not commit any blunders and past ones have perpetrated some shockers as well. What marks this one out when you survey the 13-year span of Tory rule is the gobsmacking quantity of their fumbles, foul-ups, flops and fiascos. Every day makes it look more certain that Tory government is destined for the grave. It will be buried under the crushing weight of their sheer, blithering and boundless incompetence.

    I don't think it takes a lot of research to work out that competence is a bigger issue than policy.

    The only people apparently unaware of this is the Tories, as they continue to pursue an utterly fruitless policy of sending Paddington Bear to Rwanda while about 30 million people are worried about getting a appointment to see a GP and the other 30 million are working out how to pay the rent/mortgage.
    Paddington Bear?
    Illegal arrival from Peru, as a stowaway on a ship as I recall. Sought asylum with a host family.
  • HYUFD said:

    ydoethur said:

    HYUFD said:

    Farage takes 3rd place in I'm a Celeb

    He always was terrible at elections.
    Mind you he did beat most of the contestants to get to tonight's final (and he won the Brexit referendum and 2019 and 2014 European elections of course)
    Same position as Matt Hancock and Christine Hamilton.

    Basically, the public want to keep you there, but don't like you enough for you to win.
  • SandyRentoolSandyRentool Posts: 22,011
    TimS said:

    TimS said:

    I used to do 7 overnights in a row on Freedom of Scotland Rail Rovers. And never a bed to lie in, just dossing in the seats. Sometimes bailing at Carlisle or half way up the Highland Main Line in the early hours for a connection. That's how to experience overnight train travel, not cosseted in a berth with a fresh duvet and ensuite shower.

    7 overnights in a row? Where on earth were you actually going?
    Travelling around Scotland.
    Never realised there were that many overnighters (and presumably aren’t these days).
    There used to be internal overnight trains. Glasgow and Edinburgh to Inverness, with the two portions joining at Perth. Southbound, it split at Stirling. Plus of course all the Anglo-Scottish services.
  • FoxyFoxy Posts: 48,631
    Nigelb said:

    .

    MattW said:

    Bermuda said:

    Theres also Vivek in the usa. Watch this.

    JUST IN: Vivek Ramaswamy holds up a ‘NIKKI IS CORRUPT’ sign during the Republican debate and shames Haley on stage for being willing to send Americans to die so she can “buy a bigger house.”

    Brutal 🔥

    “I don’t have a woman problem. You have a corruption problem and I think that that's what people need to know. Nikki is corrupt.”

    “This is a woman who will send your kids to die so she can buy a bigger house.”

    https://x.com/CollinRugg/status/1732593214081978586?s=20

    2 in one day! We are spoilt.

    Who's kids has she sent (would she send) to die, where, and how did (would?) she do it?

    How does this translate to corruption and a bigger house?

    Is Ramaswamy performing the Indian "Enough Rope to Hang Myself" trick?
    It was bullshit.

    Basically when she quite as UN ambassador she was $1m in debt. In the next 7 years she went from that position to a Forbes estimate of $8m net assets.

    From disclosure she spent a year on the board of Boeing ($300k), wrote two books (O’Reilly estimated $400k), made 11 paid speeches ($2.3m). She also bought a house for $2.4m but - according to O’Reilly - “there’s no way she could get that large a mortgage”

    He then insinuated she was corrupt because she went straight from being Governor of South Carolina (and giving tax breaks to attract Boeing to the state) to become a director of Boeing. Ignoring the fact that there was a 2 year+ gap between the roles.

    The “sending your kids to war” I guess is based on her being UN ambassador?
    While I agree with your analysis, the Boeing connection IS interesting. Given significant (and strategic) shift in the corporation's operations from . . . wait for it . . . Washington State to South Carolina.

    Which has had so far mixed results for Boeing, with quality-control issues curdling the bean-counters' cream) but mostly positives for the Palmetto State.

    Certainly Boeing bigwings (and boneheads) are appreciative of Nikki Haley's past (non-corrupt) services and her continuing clout in SC politics.

    And her stint as UN Ambassador further enhanced her value.

    All this is FAR from a serious or even semi
    -serious impediment for a POTUS candidate. But as in case of Mitt Romney, this is kind of corporate-government connection that raises eyebrows (as opposed to watering them) and inspires attack ads.
    The move to South Carolina wasn’t really about the tax breaks (nice though they were) - it was because it is a union free state. Boeing thought they could screw the workers but didn’t realise that aircraft manufacturing is harder than just regular assembly line stuff

    (And given Boeing now has 10s of thousands of employees in SC having a senior SC politician on the board makes sense. And it helps that she is a woman and a minority as well. Plus I’m sure she made some interesting contacts in her time as UN ambassador - if anything that’s slightly more concerning that she could move straight from that role to a big defence company)
    "Boeing thought they could screw the workers but didn’t realise that aircraft manufacturing is harder than just regular assembly line stuff."

    Indeed. And pretty freaking remarkable for an AEROSPACE TECHNOLOGY corporation!!!

    Why??? Because Boeing let a pack of over-promoted bean-counters run the show . . . damn near into the ground.

    Today the engineers are (mostly) back in the helm. Which is good news for Boeing AND for airline passengers.
    Despite being an avowed Trainist, I'm worried I might be developing an unhealthy obsession with the new 777-9 (due in service in 2025). I even got the 1:400model already.
    SO you'd rather call yourself/be called a trainist than a trainer?

    Makes sense to me! Though feel that trainite is more reflective of a real railroad fan(atic).

    How about railhead? Trackwack? Alogosideriniophile?
    Sunil is locomotivated.
    Now you are on the right track.
  • SandyRentoolSandyRentool Posts: 22,011
    Foxy said:

    Nigelb said:

    .

    MattW said:

    Bermuda said:

    Theres also Vivek in the usa. Watch this.

    JUST IN: Vivek Ramaswamy holds up a ‘NIKKI IS CORRUPT’ sign during the Republican debate and shames Haley on stage for being willing to send Americans to die so she can “buy a bigger house.”

    Brutal 🔥

    “I don’t have a woman problem. You have a corruption problem and I think that that's what people need to know. Nikki is corrupt.”

    “This is a woman who will send your kids to die so she can buy a bigger house.”

    https://x.com/CollinRugg/status/1732593214081978586?s=20

    2 in one day! We are spoilt.

    Who's kids has she sent (would she send) to die, where, and how did (would?) she do it?

    How does this translate to corruption and a bigger house?

    Is Ramaswamy performing the Indian "Enough Rope to Hang Myself" trick?
    It was bullshit.

    Basically when she quite as UN ambassador she was $1m in debt. In the next 7 years she went from that position to a Forbes estimate of $8m net assets.

    From disclosure she spent a year on the board of Boeing ($300k), wrote two books (O’Reilly estimated $400k), made 11 paid speeches ($2.3m). She also bought a house for $2.4m but - according to O’Reilly - “there’s no way she could get that large a mortgage”

    He then insinuated she was corrupt because she went straight from being Governor of South Carolina (and giving tax breaks to attract Boeing to the state) to become a director of Boeing. Ignoring the fact that there was a 2 year+ gap between the roles.

    The “sending your kids to war” I guess is based on her being UN ambassador?
    While I agree with your analysis, the Boeing connection IS interesting. Given significant (and strategic) shift in the corporation's operations from . . . wait for it . . . Washington State to South Carolina.

    Which has had so far mixed results for Boeing, with quality-control issues curdling the bean-counters' cream) but mostly positives for the Palmetto State.

    Certainly Boeing bigwings (and boneheads) are appreciative of Nikki Haley's past (non-corrupt) services and her continuing clout in SC politics.

    And her stint as UN Ambassador further enhanced her value.

    All this is FAR from a serious or even semi
    -serious impediment for a POTUS candidate. But as in case of Mitt Romney, this is kind of corporate-government connection that raises eyebrows (as opposed to watering them) and inspires attack ads.
    The move to South Carolina wasn’t really about the tax breaks (nice though they were) - it was because it is a union free state. Boeing thought they could screw the workers but didn’t realise that aircraft manufacturing is harder than just regular assembly line stuff

    (And given Boeing now has 10s of thousands of employees in SC having a senior SC politician on the board makes sense. And it helps that she is a woman and a minority as well. Plus I’m sure she made some interesting contacts in her time as UN ambassador - if anything that’s slightly more concerning that she could move straight from that role to a big defence company)
    "Boeing thought they could screw the workers but didn’t realise that aircraft manufacturing is harder than just regular assembly line stuff."

    Indeed. And pretty freaking remarkable for an AEROSPACE TECHNOLOGY corporation!!!

    Why??? Because Boeing let a pack of over-promoted bean-counters run the show . . . damn near into the ground.

    Today the engineers are (mostly) back in the helm. Which is good news for Boeing AND for airline passengers.
    Despite being an avowed Trainist, I'm worried I might be developing an unhealthy obsession with the new 777-9 (due in service in 2025). I even got the 1:400model already.
    SO you'd rather call yourself/be called a trainist than a trainer?

    Makes sense to me! Though feel that trainite is more reflective of a real railroad fan(atic).

    How about railhead? Trackwack? Alogosideriniophile?
    Sunil is locomotivated.
    Now you are on the right track.
    I think that this thread has been derailed.
  • NigelbNigelb Posts: 71,067

    MattW said:

    Bermuda said:

    Theres also Vivek in the usa. Watch this.

    JUST IN: Vivek Ramaswamy holds up a ‘NIKKI IS CORRUPT’ sign during the Republican debate and shames Haley on stage for being willing to send Americans to die so she can “buy a bigger house.”

    Brutal 🔥

    “I don’t have a woman problem. You have a corruption problem and I think that that's what people need to know. Nikki is corrupt.”

    “This is a woman who will send your kids to die so she can buy a bigger house.”

    https://x.com/CollinRugg/status/1732593214081978586?s=20

    2 in one day! We are spoilt.

    Who's kids has she sent (would she send) to die, where, and how did (would?) she do it?

    How does this translate to corruption and a bigger house?

    Is Ramaswamy performing the Indian "Enough Rope to Hang Myself" trick?
    It was bullshit.

    Basically when she quite as UN ambassador she was $1m in debt. In the next 7 years she went from that position to a Forbes estimate of $8m net assets.

    From disclosure she spent a year on the board of Boeing ($300k), wrote two books (O’Reilly estimated $400k), made 11 paid speeches ($2.3m). She also bought a house for $2.4m but - according to O’Reilly - “there’s no way she could get that large a mortgage”

    He then insinuated she was corrupt because she went straight from being Governor of South Carolina (and giving tax breaks to attract Boeing to the state) to become a director of Boeing. Ignoring the fact that there was a 2 year+ gap between the roles.

    The “sending your kids to war” I guess is based on her being UN ambassador?
    While I agree with your analysis, the Boeing connection IS interesting. Given significant (and strategic) shift in the corporation's operations from . . . wait for it . . . Washington State to South Carolina.

    Which has had so far mixed results for Boeing, with quality-control issues curdling the bean-counters' cream) but mostly positives for the Palmetto State.

    Certainly Boeing bigwings (and boneheads) are appreciative of Nikki Haley's past (non-corrupt) services and her continuing clout in SC politics.

    And her stint as UN Ambassador further enhanced her value.

    All this is FAR from a serious or even semi
    -serious impediment for a POTUS candidate. But as in case of Mitt Romney, this is kind of corporate-government connection that raises eyebrows (as opposed to watering them) and inspires attack ads.
    The move to South Carolina wasn’t really about the tax breaks (nice though they were) - it was because it is a union free state. Boeing thought they could screw the workers but didn’t realise that aircraft manufacturing is harder than just regular assembly line stuff

    (And given Boeing now has 10s of thousands of employees in SC having a senior SC politician on the board makes sense. And it helps that she is a woman and a minority as well. Plus I’m sure she made some interesting contacts in her time as UN ambassador - if anything that’s slightly more concerning that she could move straight from that role to a big defence company)
    "Boeing thought they could screw the workers but didn’t realise that aircraft manufacturing is harder than just regular assembly line stuff."

    Indeed. And pretty freaking remarkable for an AEROSPACE TECHNOLOGY corporation!!!

    Why??? Because Boeing let a pack of over-promoted bean-counters run the show . . . damn near into the ground.

    Today the engineers are (mostly) back in the helm. Which is good news for Boeing AND for airline passengers.
    Despite being an avowed Trainist, I'm worried I might be developing an unhealthy obsession with the new 777-9 (due in service in 2025). I even got the 1:400model already.
    Here's a story to get you back on the (nearly) straight and narrow:

    https://www.theguardian.com/travel/2023/dec/09/europes-geography-kind-of-reshaped-as-paris-berlin-night-train-returns
    Bah! What's the point of a night train? How can you see the scenery??
    "What's the point of a night train?"

    To experience something similar to the night train ride portrayed in "North By Northwest"?

    Hopefully with NO stopping to see Mount Rushmore!
    ydoethur said:

    MattW said:

    Bermuda said:

    Theres also Vivek in the usa. Watch this.

    JUST IN: Vivek Ramaswamy holds up a ‘NIKKI IS CORRUPT’ sign during the Republican debate and shames Haley on stage for being willing to send Americans to die so she can “buy a bigger house.”

    Brutal 🔥

    “I don’t have a woman problem. You have a corruption problem and I think that that's what people need to know. Nikki is corrupt.”

    “This is a woman who will send your kids to die so she can buy a bigger house.”

    https://x.com/CollinRugg/status/1732593214081978586?s=20

    2 in one day! We are spoilt.

    Who's kids has she sent (would she send) to die, where, and how did (would?) she do it?

    How does this translate to corruption and a bigger house?

    Is Ramaswamy performing the Indian "Enough Rope to Hang Myself" trick?
    It was bullshit.

    Basically when she quite as UN ambassador she was $1m in debt. In the next 7 years she went from that position to a Forbes estimate of $8m net assets.

    From disclosure she spent a year on the board of Boeing ($300k), wrote two books (O’Reilly estimated $400k), made 11 paid speeches ($2.3m). She also bought a house for $2.4m but - according to O’Reilly - “there’s no way she could get that large a mortgage”

    He then insinuated she was corrupt because she went straight from being Governor of South Carolina (and giving tax breaks to attract Boeing to the state) to become a director of Boeing. Ignoring the fact that there was a 2 year+ gap between the roles.

    The “sending your kids to war” I guess is based on her being UN ambassador?
    While I agree with your analysis, the Boeing connection IS interesting. Given significant (and strategic) shift in the corporation's operations from . . . wait for it . . . Washington State to South Carolina.

    Which has had so far mixed results for Boeing, with quality-control issues curdling the bean-counters' cream) but mostly positives for the Palmetto State.

    Certainly Boeing bigwings (and boneheads) are appreciative of Nikki Haley's past (non-corrupt) services and her continuing clout in SC politics.

    And her stint as UN Ambassador further enhanced her value.

    All this is FAR from a serious or even semi
    -serious impediment for a POTUS candidate. But as in case of Mitt Romney, this is kind of corporate-government connection that raises eyebrows (as opposed to watering them) and inspires attack ads.
    The move to South Carolina wasn’t really about the tax breaks (nice though they were) - it was because it is a union free state. Boeing thought they could screw the workers but didn’t realise that aircraft manufacturing is harder than just regular assembly line stuff

    (And given Boeing now has 10s of thousands of employees in SC having a senior SC politician on the board makes sense. And it helps that she is a woman and a minority as well. Plus I’m sure she made some interesting contacts in her time as UN ambassador - if anything that’s slightly more concerning that she could move straight from that role to a big defence company)
    "Boeing thought they could screw the workers but didn’t realise that aircraft manufacturing is harder than just regular assembly line stuff."

    Indeed. And pretty freaking remarkable for an AEROSPACE TECHNOLOGY corporation!!!

    Why??? Because Boeing let a pack of over-promoted bean-counters run the show . . . damn near into the ground.

    Today the engineers are (mostly) back in the helm. Which is good news for Boeing AND for airline passengers.
    Despite being an avowed Trainist, I'm worried I might be developing an unhealthy obsession with the new 777-9 (due in service in 2025). I even got the 1:400model already.
    Here's a story to get you back on the (nearly) straight and narrow:

    https://www.theguardian.com/travel/2023/dec/09/europes-geography-kind-of-reshaped-as-paris-berlin-night-train-returns
    Bah! What's the point of a night train? How can you see the scenery??
    "What's the point of a night train?"

    To experience something similar to the night train ride portrayed in "North By Northwest"?

    Hopefully with NO stopping to see Mount Rushmore!
    Did you get Grants for that kind of travel?
    Yes, but there’s always a hitch.
  • Foxy said:

    Andy_JS said:

    algarkirk said:

    IanB2 said:

    Late in the day, today’s Sunday Rawnsley:

    Four successive Tory prime ministers have been and gone, each arriving at Number 10 brandishing promises to deliver a better Britain, each departing a humiliated failure and leaving Britain in a worse place than they found it. Now, in another zoom around the Tory doom loop, a fifth prime minister is struggling to keep his head above water in a raging tempest of division and chaos self-generated by the Conservatives.

    Research recently unveiled by Professor Jane Green, a political scientist at Oxford, suggests that the disintegration of support for the Tories is much less down to ideology than it is about a collapse of trust in their competence.

    On Planet Tory, the struggle over the Rwanda legislation is being waged as if it is existential. Seen from Planet Earth, this is another and especially startling example of their incompetence. Their sole achievement has been to expel from the UK bagloads of taxpayers’ money without anything to show for it.

    It is a rare government that does not commit any blunders and past ones have perpetrated some shockers as well. What marks this one out when you survey the 13-year span of Tory rule is the gobsmacking quantity of their fumbles, foul-ups, flops and fiascos. Every day makes it look more certain that Tory government is destined for the grave. It will be buried under the crushing weight of their sheer, blithering and boundless incompetence.

    I don't think it takes a lot of research to work out that competence is a bigger issue than policy.

    The only people apparently unaware of this is the Tories, as they continue to pursue an utterly fruitless policy of sending Paddington Bear to Rwanda while about 30 million people are worried about getting a appointment to see a GP and the other 30 million are working out how to pay the rent/mortgage.
    Paddington Bear?
    Illegal arrival from Peru, as a stowaway on a ship as I recall. Sought asylum with a host family.
    How long before Mr Curry gets a ministerial role at the Home Office?
  • NigelbNigelb Posts: 71,067

    MattW said:

    Bermuda said:

    Theres also Vivek in the usa. Watch this.

    JUST IN: Vivek Ramaswamy holds up a ‘NIKKI IS CORRUPT’ sign during the Republican debate and shames Haley on stage for being willing to send Americans to die so she can “buy a bigger house.”

    Brutal 🔥

    “I don’t have a woman problem. You have a corruption problem and I think that that's what people need to know. Nikki is corrupt.”

    “This is a woman who will send your kids to die so she can buy a bigger house.”

    https://x.com/CollinRugg/status/1732593214081978586?s=20

    2 in one day! We are spoilt.

    Who's kids has she sent (would she send) to die, where, and how did (would?) she do it?

    How does this translate to corruption and a bigger house?

    Is Ramaswamy performing the Indian "Enough Rope to Hang Myself" trick?
    It was bullshit.

    Basically when she quite as UN ambassador she was $1m in debt. In the next 7 years she went from that position to a Forbes estimate of $8m net assets.

    From disclosure she spent a year on the board of Boeing ($300k), wrote two books (O’Reilly estimated $400k), made 11 paid speeches ($2.3m). She also bought a house for $2.4m but - according to O’Reilly - “there’s no way she could get that large a mortgage”

    He then insinuated she was corrupt because she went straight from being Governor of South Carolina (and giving tax breaks to attract Boeing to the state) to become a director of Boeing. Ignoring the fact that there was a 2 year+ gap between the roles.

    The “sending your kids to war” I guess is based on her being UN ambassador?
    While I agree with your analysis, the Boeing connection IS interesting. Given significant (and strategic) shift in the corporation's operations from . . . wait for it . . . Washington State to South Carolina.

    Which has had so far mixed results for Boeing, with quality-control issues curdling the bean-counters' cream) but mostly positives for the Palmetto State.

    Certainly Boeing bigwings (and boneheads) are appreciative of Nikki Haley's past (non-corrupt) services and her continuing clout in SC politics.

    And her stint as UN Ambassador further enhanced her value.

    All this is FAR from a serious or even semi
    -serious impediment for a POTUS candidate. But as in case of Mitt Romney, this is kind of corporate-government connection that raises eyebrows (as opposed to watering them) and inspires attack ads.
    The move to South Carolina wasn’t really about the tax breaks (nice though they were) - it was because it is a union free state. Boeing thought they could screw the workers but didn’t realise that aircraft manufacturing is harder than just regular assembly line stuff

    (And given Boeing now has 10s of thousands of employees in SC having a senior SC politician on the board makes sense. And it helps that she is a woman and a minority as well. Plus I’m sure she made some interesting contacts in her time as UN ambassador - if anything that’s slightly more concerning that she could move straight from that role to a big defence company)
    "Boeing thought they could screw the workers but didn’t realise that aircraft manufacturing is harder than just regular assembly line stuff."

    Indeed. And pretty freaking remarkable for an AEROSPACE TECHNOLOGY corporation!!!

    Why??? Because Boeing let a pack of over-promoted bean-counters run the show . . . damn near into the ground.

    Today the engineers are (mostly) back in the helm. Which is good news for Boeing AND for airline passengers.
    Despite being an avowed Trainist, I'm worried I might be developing an unhealthy obsession with the new 777-9 (due in service in 2025). I even got the 1:400model already.
    Here's a story to get you back on the (nearly) straight and narrow:

    https://www.theguardian.com/travel/2023/dec/09/europes-geography-kind-of-reshaped-as-paris-berlin-night-train-returns
    Bah! What's the point of a night train? How can you see the scenery??
    "What's the point of a night train?"

    It’s pure poetry.

    … Letters of thanks, letters from banks,
    Letters of joy from girl and boy,
    Receipted bills and invitations
    To inspect new stock or to visit relations,
    And applications for situations,
    And timid lovers' declarations,
    And gossip, gossip from all the nations,
    News circumstantial, news financial,
    Letters with holiday snaps to enlarge in,
    Letters with faces scrawled on the margin,
    Letters from uncles, cousins, and aunts,
    Letters to Scotland from the South of France,
    Letters of condolence to Highlands and Lowlands
    Written on paper of every hue,
    The pink, the violet, the white and the blue,
    The chatty, the catty, the boring, the adoring,
    The cold and official and the heart's outpouring,
    Clever, stupid, short and long,
    The typed and the printed and the spelt all wrong.

    Thousands are still asleep,
    Dreaming of terrifying monsters
    Or of friendly tea beside the band in Cranston's or Crawford's:

    Asleep in working Glasgow, asleep in well-set Edinburgh,
    Asleep in granite Aberdeen,
    They continue their dreams,
    But shall wake soon and hope for letters,
    And none will hear the postman's knock
    Without a quickening of the heart,
    For who can bear to feel himself forgotten?


  • MattW said:

    Bermuda said:

    Theres also Vivek in the usa. Watch this.

    JUST IN: Vivek Ramaswamy holds up a ‘NIKKI IS CORRUPT’ sign during the Republican debate and shames Haley on stage for being willing to send Americans to die so she can “buy a bigger house.”

    Brutal 🔥

    “I don’t have a woman problem. You have a corruption problem and I think that that's what people need to know. Nikki is corrupt.”

    “This is a woman who will send your kids to die so she can buy a bigger house.”

    https://x.com/CollinRugg/status/1732593214081978586?s=20

    2 in one day! We are spoilt.

    Who's kids has she sent (would she send) to die, where, and how did (would?) she do it?

    How does this translate to corruption and a bigger house?

    Is Ramaswamy performing the Indian "Enough Rope to Hang Myself" trick?
    It was bullshit.

    Basically when she quite as UN ambassador she was $1m in debt. In the next 7 years she went from that position to a Forbes estimate of $8m net assets.

    From disclosure she spent a year on the board of Boeing ($300k), wrote two books (O’Reilly estimated $400k), made 11 paid speeches ($2.3m). She also bought a house for $2.4m but - according to O’Reilly - “there’s no way she could get that large a mortgage”

    He then insinuated she was corrupt because she went straight from being Governor of South Carolina (and giving tax breaks to attract Boeing to the state) to become a director of Boeing. Ignoring the fact that there was a 2 year+ gap between the roles.

    The “sending your kids to war” I guess is based on her being UN ambassador?
    While I agree with your analysis, the Boeing connection IS interesting. Given significant (and strategic) shift in the corporation's operations from . . . wait for it . . . Washington State to South Carolina.

    Which has had so far mixed results for Boeing, with quality-control issues curdling the bean-counters' cream) but mostly positives for the Palmetto State.

    Certainly Boeing bigwings (and boneheads) are appreciative of Nikki Haley's past (non-corrupt) services and her continuing clout in SC politics.

    And her stint as UN Ambassador further enhanced her value.

    All this is FAR from a serious or even semi
    -serious impediment for a POTUS candidate. But as in case of Mitt Romney, this is kind of corporate-government connection that raises eyebrows (as opposed to watering them) and inspires attack ads.
    The move to South Carolina wasn’t really about the tax breaks (nice though they were) - it was because it is a union free state. Boeing thought they could screw the workers but didn’t realise that aircraft manufacturing is harder than just regular assembly line stuff

    (And given Boeing now has 10s of thousands of employees in SC having a senior SC politician on the board makes sense. And it helps that she is a woman and a minority as well. Plus I’m sure she made some interesting contacts in her time as UN ambassador - if anything that’s slightly more concerning that she could move straight from that role to a big defence company)
    "Boeing thought they could screw the workers but didn’t realise that aircraft manufacturing is harder than just regular assembly line stuff."

    Indeed. And pretty freaking remarkable for an AEROSPACE TECHNOLOGY corporation!!!

    Why??? Because Boeing let a pack of over-promoted bean-counters run the show . . . damn near into the ground.

    Today the engineers are (mostly) back in the helm. Which is good news for Boeing AND for airline passengers.
    Despite being an avowed Trainist, I'm worried I might be developing an unhealthy obsession with the new 777-9 (due in service in 2025). I even got the 1:400model already.
    SO you'd rather call yourself/be called a trainist than a trainer?

    Makes sense to me! Though feel that trainite is more reflective of a real railroad fan(atic).

    How about railhead? Trackwack? Alogosideriniophile?
    I thought you would have applauded my interest in Seattle's newest giant plane!
  • carnforthcarnforth Posts: 4,579
    CatMan said:

    carnforth said:

    CatMan said:

    carnforth said:

    MattW said:

    Bermuda said:

    Theres also Vivek in the usa. Watch this.

    JUST IN: Vivek Ramaswamy holds up a ‘NIKKI IS CORRUPT’ sign during the Republican debate and shames Haley on stage for being willing to send Americans to die so she can “buy a bigger house.”

    Brutal 🔥

    “I don’t have a woman problem. You have a corruption problem and I think that that's what people need to know. Nikki is corrupt.”

    “This is a woman who will send your kids to die so she can buy a bigger house.”

    https://x.com/CollinRugg/status/1732593214081978586?s=20

    2 in one day! We are spoilt.

    Who's kids has she sent (would she send) to die, where, and how did (would?) she do it?

    How does this translate to corruption and a bigger house?

    Is Ramaswamy performing the Indian "Enough Rope to Hang Myself" trick?
    It was bullshit.

    Basically when she quite as UN ambassador she was $1m in debt. In the next 7 years she went from that position to a Forbes estimate of $8m net assets.

    From disclosure she spent a year on the board of Boeing ($300k), wrote two books (O’Reilly estimated $400k), made 11 paid speeches ($2.3m). She also bought a house for $2.4m but - according to O’Reilly - “there’s no way she could get that large a mortgage”

    He then insinuated she was corrupt because she went straight from being Governor of South Carolina (and giving tax breaks to attract Boeing to the state) to become a director of Boeing. Ignoring the fact that there was a 2 year+ gap between the roles.

    The “sending your kids to war” I guess is based on her being UN ambassador?
    While I agree with your analysis, the Boeing connection IS interesting. Given significant (and strategic) shift in the corporation's operations from . . . wait for it . . . Washington State to South Carolina.

    Which has had so far mixed results for Boeing, with quality-control issues curdling the bean-counters' cream) but mostly positives for the Palmetto State.

    Certainly Boeing bigwings (and boneheads) are appreciative of Nikki Haley's past (non-corrupt) services and her continuing clout in SC politics.

    And her stint as UN Ambassador further enhanced her value.

    All this is FAR from a serious or even semi
    -serious impediment for a POTUS candidate. But as in case of Mitt Romney, this is kind of corporate-government connection that raises eyebrows (as opposed to watering them) and inspires attack ads.
    The move to South Carolina wasn’t really about the tax breaks (nice though they were) - it was because it is a union free state. Boeing thought they could screw the workers but didn’t realise that aircraft manufacturing is harder than just regular assembly line stuff

    (And given Boeing now has 10s of thousands of employees in SC having a senior SC politician on the board makes sense. And it helps that she is a woman and a minority as well. Plus I’m sure she made some interesting contacts in her time as UN ambassador - if anything that’s slightly more concerning that she could move straight from that role to a big defence company)
    "Boeing thought they could screw the workers but didn’t realise that aircraft manufacturing is harder than just regular assembly line stuff."

    Indeed. And pretty freaking remarkable for an AEROSPACE TECHNOLOGY corporation!!!

    Why??? Because Boeing let a pack of over-promoted bean-counters run the show . . . damn near into the ground.

    Today the engineers are (mostly) back in the helm. Which is good news for Boeing AND for airline passengers.
    Despite being an avowed Trainist, I'm worried I might be developing an unhealthy obsession with the new 777-9 (due in service in 2025). I even got the 1:400model already.
    Here's a story to get you back on the (nearly) straight and narrow:

    https://www.theguardian.com/travel/2023/dec/09/europes-geography-kind-of-reshaped-as-paris-berlin-night-train-returns


    Curious lack of french connections here. France - Italy night trains, for example. The link to Spain presumably difficult because of guages.

    And, of course the nightstar link to the UK was aborted before the tunnel even opened. The nightstar stock was built, though. It's now in use in Canada.
    The viability of cross Channel passenger trains is limited by the fact that we insist that you need Airport style security before getting on a Eurostar at St Pancras, where all your luggage is searched, which is pointless, as like ferries that cross the Channel, most cars *aren't* searched before you go on a cross channel vehicle transport train.
    Not pointless at all. Blowing up the tunnel is vastly worse than blowing up one ferry.

    The nightstar was cancelled due to cheap flights, by all accounts.
    Yes, but as I said, most cars that go through the Tunnel aren't searched (because it's totally impractical). They only do random searches, exactly like cars that go on the ferry. So if you're a terrorist that wants to blow up the Channel Tunnel, book a ticket on LeShuttle, place the bomb in the boot, and there's a 99% chance that you'll be successful.
    Ah sorry, misread you.
  • PPE bought via ‘VIP lane’ was on average 80% more expensive, documents reveal
    Good Law Project finds items were priced up to four times higher by companies referred through scheme by UK ministers

    https://www.theguardian.com/world/2023/dec/10/ppe-via-vip-lane-average-80-percent-more-expensive-documents-reveal
  • NigelbNigelb Posts: 71,067

    PPE bought via ‘VIP lane’ was on average 80% more expensive, documents reveal
    Good Law Project finds items were priced up to four times higher by companies referred through scheme by UK ministers

    https://www.theguardian.com/world/2023/dec/10/ppe-via-vip-lane-average-80-percent-more-expensive-documents-reveal

    A full investigation, and appropriate restitution are required.
  • DecrepiterJohnLDecrepiterJohnL Posts: 27,886
    edited December 2023
    Nigelb said:

    PPE bought via ‘VIP lane’ was on average 80% more expensive, documents reveal
    Good Law Project finds items were priced up to four times higher by companies referred through scheme by UK ministers

    https://www.theguardian.com/world/2023/dec/10/ppe-via-vip-lane-average-80-percent-more-expensive-documents-reveal

    A full investigation, and appropriate restitution are required.
    Good luck with that, although Michelle Mone's change of tactics over the last couple of days might indicate something is afoot.
  • carnforthcarnforth Posts: 4,579

    Nigelb said:

    PPE bought via ‘VIP lane’ was on average 80% more expensive, documents reveal
    Good Law Project finds items were priced up to four times higher by companies referred through scheme by UK ministers

    https://www.theguardian.com/world/2023/dec/10/ppe-via-vip-lane-average-80-percent-more-expensive-documents-reveal

    A full investigation, and appropriate restitution are required.
    Good luck with that, although Michelle Mone's change of tactics over the last couple of days might indicate something is afoot.
    The government is already seeking restitution:

    https://amp.theguardian.com/politics/2022/dec/19/ppe-medpro-uk-government-issues-breach-of-contract-proceedings
  • MattW said:

    Bermuda said:

    Theres also Vivek in the usa. Watch this.

    JUST IN: Vivek Ramaswamy holds up a ‘NIKKI IS CORRUPT’ sign during the Republican debate and shames Haley on stage for being willing to send Americans to die so she can “buy a bigger house.”

    Brutal 🔥

    “I don’t have a woman problem. You have a corruption problem and I think that that's what people need to know. Nikki is corrupt.”

    “This is a woman who will send your kids to die so she can buy a bigger house.”

    https://x.com/CollinRugg/status/1732593214081978586?s=20

    2 in one day! We are spoilt.

    Who's kids has she sent (would she send) to die, where, and how did (would?) she do it?

    How does this translate to corruption and a bigger house?

    Is Ramaswamy performing the Indian "Enough Rope to Hang Myself" trick?
    It was bullshit.

    Basically when she quite as UN ambassador she was $1m in debt. In the next 7 years she went from that position to a Forbes estimate of $8m net assets.

    From disclosure she spent a year on the board of Boeing ($300k), wrote two books (O’Reilly estimated $400k), made 11 paid speeches ($2.3m). She also bought a house for $2.4m but - according to O’Reilly - “there’s no way she could get that large a mortgage”

    He then insinuated she was corrupt because she went straight from being Governor of South Carolina (and giving tax breaks to attract Boeing to the state) to become a director of Boeing. Ignoring the fact that there was a 2 year+ gap between the roles.

    The “sending your kids to war” I guess is based on her being UN ambassador?
    While I agree with your analysis, the Boeing connection IS interesting. Given significant (and strategic) shift in the corporation's operations from . . . wait for it . . . Washington State to South Carolina.

    Which has had so far mixed results for Boeing, with quality-control issues curdling the bean-counters' cream) but mostly positives for the Palmetto State.

    Certainly Boeing bigwings (and boneheads) are appreciative of Nikki Haley's past (non-corrupt) services and her continuing clout in SC politics.

    And her stint as UN Ambassador further enhanced her value.

    All this is FAR from a serious or even semi
    -serious impediment for a POTUS candidate. But as in case of Mitt Romney, this is kind of corporate-government connection that raises eyebrows (as opposed to watering them) and inspires attack ads.
    The move to South Carolina wasn’t really about the tax breaks (nice though they were) - it was because it is a union free state. Boeing thought they could screw the workers but didn’t realise that aircraft manufacturing is harder than just regular assembly line stuff

    (And given Boeing now has 10s of thousands of employees in SC having a senior SC politician on the board makes sense. And it helps that she is a woman and a minority as well. Plus I’m sure she made some interesting contacts in her time as UN ambassador - if anything that’s slightly more concerning that she could move straight from that role to a big defence company)
    "Boeing thought they could screw the workers but didn’t realise that aircraft manufacturing is harder than just regular assembly line stuff."

    Indeed. And pretty freaking remarkable for an AEROSPACE TECHNOLOGY corporation!!!

    Why??? Because Boeing let a pack of over-promoted bean-counters run the show . . . damn near into the ground.

    Today the engineers are (mostly) back in the helm. Which is good news for Boeing AND for airline passengers.
    Despite being an avowed Trainist, I'm worried I might be developing an unhealthy obsession with the new 777-9 (due in service in 2025). I even got the 1:400model already.
    SO you'd rather call yourself/be called a trainist than a trainer?

    Makes sense to me! Though feel that trainite is more reflective of a real railroad fan(atic).

    How about railhead? Trackwack? Alogosideriniophile?
    I thought you would have applauded my interest in Seattle's newest giant plane!
    I gave you a like! OR do you want me to take it back?
  • Nigelb said:

    .

    MattW said:

    Bermuda said:

    Theres also Vivek in the usa. Watch this.

    JUST IN: Vivek Ramaswamy holds up a ‘NIKKI IS CORRUPT’ sign during the Republican debate and shames Haley on stage for being willing to send Americans to die so she can “buy a bigger house.”

    Brutal 🔥

    “I don’t have a woman problem. You have a corruption problem and I think that that's what people need to know. Nikki is corrupt.”

    “This is a woman who will send your kids to die so she can buy a bigger house.”

    https://x.com/CollinRugg/status/1732593214081978586?s=20

    2 in one day! We are spoilt.

    Who's kids has she sent (would she send) to die, where, and how did (would?) she do it?

    How does this translate to corruption and a bigger house?

    Is Ramaswamy performing the Indian "Enough Rope to Hang Myself" trick?
    It was bullshit.

    Basically when she quite as UN ambassador she was $1m in debt. In the next 7 years she went from that position to a Forbes estimate of $8m net assets.

    From disclosure she spent a year on the board of Boeing ($300k), wrote two books (O’Reilly estimated $400k), made 11 paid speeches ($2.3m). She also bought a house for $2.4m but - according to O’Reilly - “there’s no way she could get that large a mortgage”

    He then insinuated she was corrupt because she went straight from being Governor of South Carolina (and giving tax breaks to attract Boeing to the state) to become a director of Boeing. Ignoring the fact that there was a 2 year+ gap between the roles.

    The “sending your kids to war” I guess is based on her being UN ambassador?
    While I agree with your analysis, the Boeing connection IS interesting. Given significant (and strategic) shift in the corporation's operations from . . . wait for it . . . Washington State to South Carolina.

    Which has had so far mixed results for Boeing, with quality-control issues curdling the bean-counters' cream) but mostly positives for the Palmetto State.

    Certainly Boeing bigwings (and boneheads) are appreciative of Nikki Haley's past (non-corrupt) services and her continuing clout in SC politics.

    And her stint as UN Ambassador further enhanced her value.

    All this is FAR from a serious or even semi
    -serious impediment for a POTUS candidate. But as in case of Mitt Romney, this is kind of corporate-government connection that raises eyebrows (as opposed to watering them) and inspires attack ads.
    The move to South Carolina wasn’t really about the tax breaks (nice though they were) - it was because it is a union free state. Boeing thought they could screw the workers but didn’t realise that aircraft manufacturing is harder than just regular assembly line stuff

    (And given Boeing now has 10s of thousands of employees in SC having a senior SC politician on the board makes sense. And it helps that she is a woman and a minority as well. Plus I’m sure she made some interesting contacts in her time as UN ambassador - if anything that’s slightly more concerning that she could move straight from that role to a big defence company)
    "Boeing thought they could screw the workers but didn’t realise that aircraft manufacturing is harder than just regular assembly line stuff."

    Indeed. And pretty freaking remarkable for an AEROSPACE TECHNOLOGY corporation!!!

    Why??? Because Boeing let a pack of over-promoted bean-counters run the show . . . damn near into the ground.

    Today the engineers are (mostly) back in the helm. Which is good news for Boeing AND for airline passengers.
    Despite being an avowed Trainist, I'm worried I might be developing an unhealthy obsession with the new 777-9 (due in service in 2025). I even got the 1:400model already.
    SO you'd rather call yourself/be called a trainist than a trainer?

    Makes sense to me! Though feel that trainite is more reflective of a real railroad fan(atic).

    How about railhead? Trackwack? Alogosideriniophile?
    Sunil is locomotivated.
    At least half of that description is correct!
  • Bill Kristol
    @BillKristol
    ·
    3h
    "...growing concerns in Trump’s circle about some perceptions associated with his second term. It comes as experts and political opponents have raised alarms about the former president and his allies embracing authoritarian ideas and rhetoric."

    https://twitter.com/BillKristol
  • MattWMattW Posts: 23,139
    Hmm.

    Trump running away from testifying tomorrow in the NY Civil Fraud trial.

  • carnforth said:

    Nigelb said:

    PPE bought via ‘VIP lane’ was on average 80% more expensive, documents reveal
    Good Law Project finds items were priced up to four times higher by companies referred through scheme by UK ministers

    https://www.theguardian.com/world/2023/dec/10/ppe-via-vip-lane-average-80-percent-more-expensive-documents-reveal

    A full investigation, and appropriate restitution are required.
    Good luck with that, although Michelle Mone's change of tactics over the last couple of days might indicate something is afoot.
    The government is already seeking restitution:

    https://amp.theguardian.com/politics/2022/dec/19/ppe-medpro-uk-government-issues-breach-of-contract-proceedings
    How's about HMG seizing her yacht? Then making it the official "Royal Yacht" suitable & available for day trips & the like, by small groups of more-or-less average subjecta as recognition for their public service and other contributions to the realm?
  • NigelbNigelb Posts: 71,067
    Trump announces that he is chickening out of testifying tomorrow, as I predicted.
    https://twitter.com/RonFilipkowski/status/1733947051568669057
  • MattWMattW Posts: 23,139
    MattW said:

    Hmm.

    Trump running away from testifying tomorrow in the NY Civil Fraud trial.

    SS:

  • ydoethur said:

    HYUFD said:

    Farage takes 3rd place in I'm a Celeb

    He always was terrible at elections.
    Taking the Tories to third is well within his capabilities.
  • Fan boy latest...



    Darren Grimes

    @darrengrimes_
    ·
    1h
    So sad to see Nigel not win it. But you know what? History will remember that man long after the jungle. He has proven himself as someone that didn’t complain, grumble or seek drama. A truly good man that loves his country and what he does. Certainly my winner anyway! #ImACeleb
  • NigelbNigelb Posts: 71,067
    carnforth said:

    Nigelb said:

    PPE bought via ‘VIP lane’ was on average 80% more expensive, documents reveal
    Good Law Project finds items were priced up to four times higher by companies referred through scheme by UK ministers

    https://www.theguardian.com/world/2023/dec/10/ppe-via-vip-lane-average-80-percent-more-expensive-documents-reveal

    A full investigation, and appropriate restitution are required.
    Good luck with that, although Michelle Mone's change of tactics over the last couple of days might indicate something is afoot.
    The government is already seeking restitution:

    https://amp.theguardian.com/politics/2022/dec/19/ppe-medpro-uk-government-issues-breach-of-contract-proceedings
    I am finally breaking my silence to fight back against the lies of this government. Read the truth about PPE Medpro and the DHSC in
    @Telegraph.

    https://twitter.com/MichelleMone/status/1733575091290874219

    Does the story include this quote ?
    'If it falls to me to start a fight to cut out the cancer of bent and twisted journalism in our country with the simple sword of truth and the trusty shield of fair play, so be it. I am ready for the fight..”
  • ydoethur said:

    HYUFD said:

    Farage takes 3rd place in I'm a Celeb

    He always was terrible at elections.
    Taking the Tories to third is well within his capabilities.
    Dan Hodges claims he is picking up a plot to do a Johnson/Farage dream ticket.

    I suspect the pre-xmas port has been flowing liberally when that was typed up.
  • carnforthcarnforth Posts: 4,579
    In news north of the border, today's Times article on Murrell's dodgy Jag contains the following gem:

    "It is understood Murrell, who quit his job earlier this year, was seen at the We Buy Any Car offices in Glasgow trying to sell the car."
  • El_CapitanoEl_Capitano Posts: 4,239

    ydoethur said:

    HYUFD said:

    Farage takes 3rd place in I'm a Celeb

    He always was terrible at elections.
    Taking the Tories to third is well within his capabilities.
    Dan Hodges claims he is picking up a plot to do a Johnson/Farage dream ticket.
    A dream for Keir Starmer, yes.
  • Foxy said:

    TimS said:

    MattW said:

    Bermuda said:

    Theres also Vivek in the usa. Watch this.

    JUST IN: Vivek Ramaswamy holds up a ‘NIKKI IS CORRUPT’ sign during the Republican debate and shames Haley on stage for being willing to send Americans to die so she can “buy a bigger house.”

    Brutal 🔥

    “I don’t have a woman problem. You have a corruption problem and I think that that's what people need to know. Nikki is corrupt.”

    “This is a woman who will send your kids to die so she can buy a bigger house.”

    https://x.com/CollinRugg/status/1732593214081978586?s=20

    2 in one day! We are spoilt.

    Who's kids has she sent (would she send) to die, where, and how did (would?) she do it?

    How does this translate to corruption and a bigger house?

    Is Ramaswamy performing the Indian "Enough Rope to Hang Myself" trick?
    It was bullshit.

    Basically when she quite as UN ambassador she was $1m in debt. In the next 7 years she went from that position to a Forbes estimate of $8m net assets.

    From disclosure she spent a year on the board of Boeing ($300k), wrote two books (O’Reilly estimated $400k), made 11 paid speeches ($2.3m). She also bought a house for $2.4m but - according to O’Reilly - “there’s no way she could get that large a mortgage”

    He then insinuated she was corrupt because she went straight from being Governor of South Carolina (and giving tax breaks to attract Boeing to the state) to become a director of Boeing. Ignoring the fact that there was a 2 year+ gap between the roles.

    The “sending your kids to war” I guess is based on her being UN ambassador?
    While I agree with your analysis, the Boeing connection IS interesting. Given significant (and strategic) shift in the corporation's operations from . . . wait for it . . . Washington State to South Carolina.

    Which has had so far mixed results for Boeing, with quality-control issues curdling the bean-counters' cream) but mostly positives for the Palmetto State.

    Certainly Boeing bigwings (and boneheads) are appreciative of Nikki Haley's past (non-corrupt) services and her continuing clout in SC politics.

    And her stint as UN Ambassador further enhanced her value.

    All this is FAR from a serious or even semi
    -serious impediment for a POTUS candidate. But as in case of Mitt Romney, this is kind of corporate-government connection that raises eyebrows (as opposed to watering them) and inspires attack ads.
    The move to South Carolina wasn’t really about the tax breaks (nice though they were) - it was because it is a union free state. Boeing thought they could screw the workers but didn’t realise that aircraft manufacturing is harder than just regular assembly line stuff

    (And given Boeing now has 10s of thousands of employees in SC having a senior SC politician on the board makes sense. And it helps that she is a woman and a minority as well. Plus I’m sure she made some interesting contacts in her time as UN ambassador - if anything that’s slightly more concerning that she could move straight from that role to a big defence company)
    "Boeing thought they could screw the workers but didn’t realise that aircraft manufacturing is harder than just regular assembly line stuff."

    Indeed. And pretty freaking remarkable for an AEROSPACE TECHNOLOGY corporation!!!

    Why??? Because Boeing let a pack of over-promoted bean-counters run the show . . . damn near into the ground.

    Today the engineers are (mostly) back in the helm. Which is good news for Boeing AND for airline passengers.
    Despite being an avowed Trainist, I'm worried I might be developing an unhealthy obsession with the new 777-9 (due in service in 2025). I even got the 1:400model already.
    Here's a story to get you back on the (nearly) straight and narrow:

    https://www.theguardian.com/travel/2023/dec/09/europes-geography-kind-of-reshaped-as-paris-berlin-night-train-returns
    Bah! What's the point of a night train? How can you see the scenery??
    This is a good point. It’s why the best night trains do the boring landscapes overnight and then you awake to great scenery.

    I must admit to this being as much theory as practice. I’ve done 4 night trains: Paris to Florence, Jaipur to Jodhpur, Venice to Paris and London to Fort William (and back Edinburgh to London, which is shit because too short).

    Waking up in the middle of nowhere in Rajastan is magical, and anyway the towns and cities are the highlight. The France-Italy trips do cross the Alps at night but a. you stop at various places and you don’t sleep that much so you see the snow out of the window, b. it’s mostly tunnels anyway. The Caledonian sleeper times itself so you wake around the shores of Loch Lomond and is ideally timed (or would be if I hadn’t traveled in 2020 when they closed the dining car).
    I have done a fair few night trains, as did several on each of 2 interrail holidays in the Eighties, including the laughably named "Acropolis Express" that took 40 hours to get from Venice to Athens (scheduled 36) when we didn't get a seat until past the Greek border as the train was full of Yougoslav soldiers heading home, very stinky and drunk.

    On my honeymoon We took the Mombassa to Nairobi night train, which was an unrestored imperial relic. A bit shopworn but fabulously atmospheric, with a colonial style 5 course meal served on British East Africa Railways China and silverware. Watching giraffes from the train as we passed through the game park was quite some approach to Nairobi. A great railway museum next to the station too. Mrs Foxy puts up with a lot!

    Also the Butterworth Malaysia to Bangkok night sleeper, which was very comfy.

    Both were in 1989-90. Not sure if they still run.
    I did the “lunatic line” from Mombasa to Nairobi - at the time I thought the dinner daft - suet pudding and sponge with custard - but someone explained to me that’s a great way to load carbohydrates.

    Trains I’ve taken:
    Trans-Siberian
    The Ghan
    The Indian Pacific
    The Sunlander
    The Silver Meteor
    The Sunset Ltd
    The Coast Starlight
    The California Zephyr
    The Lakeshore Ltd

    Then there was a month in India on “Butterfield’s Indian Railway Tour”….all great fun.
  • MattW said:

    Bermuda said:

    Theres also Vivek in the usa. Watch this.

    JUST IN: Vivek Ramaswamy holds up a ‘NIKKI IS CORRUPT’ sign during the Republican debate and shames Haley on stage for being willing to send Americans to die so she can “buy a bigger house.”

    Brutal 🔥

    “I don’t have a woman problem. You have a corruption problem and I think that that's what people need to know. Nikki is corrupt.”

    “This is a woman who will send your kids to die so she can buy a bigger house.”

    https://x.com/CollinRugg/status/1732593214081978586?s=20

    2 in one day! We are spoilt.

    Who's kids has she sent (would she send) to die, where, and how did (would?) she do it?

    How does this translate to corruption and a bigger house?

    Is Ramaswamy performing the Indian "Enough Rope to Hang Myself" trick?
    It was bullshit.

    Basically when she quite as UN ambassador she was $1m in debt. In the next 7 years she went from that position to a Forbes estimate of $8m net assets.

    From disclosure she spent a year on the board of Boeing ($300k), wrote two books (O’Reilly estimated $400k), made 11 paid speeches ($2.3m). She also bought a house for $2.4m but - according to O’Reilly - “there’s no way she could get that large a mortgage”

    He then insinuated she was corrupt because she went straight from being Governor of South Carolina (and giving tax breaks to attract Boeing to the state) to become a director of Boeing. Ignoring the fact that there was a 2 year+ gap between the roles.

    The “sending your kids to war” I guess is based on her being UN ambassador?
    While I agree with your analysis, the Boeing connection IS interesting. Given significant (and strategic) shift in the corporation's operations from . . . wait for it . . . Washington State to South Carolina.

    Which has had so far mixed results for Boeing, with quality-control issues curdling the bean-counters' cream) but mostly positives for the Palmetto State.

    Certainly Boeing bigwings (and boneheads) are appreciative of Nikki Haley's past (non-corrupt) services and her continuing clout in SC politics.

    And her stint as UN Ambassador further enhanced her value.

    All this is FAR from a serious or even semi
    -serious impediment for a POTUS candidate. But as in case of Mitt Romney, this is kind of corporate-government connection that raises eyebrows (as opposed to watering them) and inspires attack ads.
    The move to South Carolina wasn’t really about the tax breaks (nice though they were) - it was because it is a union free state. Boeing thought they could screw the workers but didn’t realise that aircraft manufacturing is harder than just regular assembly line stuff

    (And given Boeing now has 10s of thousands of employees in SC having a senior SC politician on the board makes sense. And it helps that she is a woman and a minority as well. Plus I’m sure she made some interesting contacts in her time as UN ambassador - if anything that’s slightly more concerning that she could move straight from that role to a big defence company)
    "Boeing thought they could screw the workers but didn’t realise that aircraft manufacturing is harder than just regular assembly line stuff."

    Indeed. And pretty freaking remarkable for an AEROSPACE TECHNOLOGY corporation!!!

    Why??? Because Boeing let a pack of over-promoted bean-counters run the show . . . damn near into the ground.

    Today the engineers are (mostly) back in the helm. Which is good news for Boeing AND for airline passengers.
    Despite being an avowed Trainist, I'm worried I might be developing an unhealthy obsession with the new 777-9 (due in service in 2025). I even got the 1:400model already.
    SO you'd rather call yourself/be called a trainist than a trainer?

    Makes sense to me! Though feel that trainite is more reflective of a real railroad fan(atic).

    How about railhead? Trackwack? Alogosideriniophile?
    I thought you would have applauded my interest in Seattle's newest giant plane!
    I gave you a like! OR do you want me to take it back?
    Didn't see that at first - Much appreciated :)
  • MattWMattW Posts: 23,139
    LOL.

    The six things not-at-all-obvious-to-anybody-who-has-not-their-brain-transferred-to-a-pickle-jar Radio 4's "Sliced Bread" thinks its audience don't know about portable electric heaters:

    https://www.bbc.co.uk/programmes/articles/15R4PpS7qFDbJ6QrY3Hy36S/whats-the-best-way-to-heat-a-room-this-winter
  • NigelbNigelb Posts: 71,067
    Calls grow for shift from two-party political system
    https://m.koreatimes.co.kr/pages/article.asp?newsIdx=364814
  • Farage lost the jungle, yet is on the front pages.

    What a time we live in.
  • Fan boy latest...



    Darren Grimes

    @darrengrimes_
    ·
    1h
    So sad to see Nigel not win it. But you know what? History will remember that man long after the jungle. He has proven himself as someone that didn’t complain, grumble or seek drama. A truly good man that loves his country and what he does. Certainly my winner anyway! #ImACeleb

    There is nobody more shameless and opportunistic than Darren.

    How else do you go from a gay pro EU fanboy to an anti-woke far right nutjub?
  • kyf_100kyf_100 Posts: 4,938
    MattW said:

    LOL.

    The six things not-at-all-obvious-to-anybody-who-has-not-their-brain-transferred-to-a-pickle-jar Radio 4's "Sliced Bread" thinks its audience don't know about portable electric heaters:

    https://www.bbc.co.uk/programmes/articles/15R4PpS7qFDbJ6QrY3Hy36S/whats-the-best-way-to-heat-a-room-this-winter

    Yep, absolute crap, but the bit at the end about heated clothing and heated blankets is something surprisingly few people really get.

    Since heating prices got ridiculous, I've used heated blankets and heated jackets the last couple of years, and my heating bill has actually *dropped* since 2021.

    I won't give the parasitic bastards the pleasure of taking a single extra penny off me.
  • FrankBoothFrankBooth Posts: 9,826
    What do people think of Javier Milei?

    A Thatcher admiring anarcho capitalist, keen on Ukraine and Israel. Then there's a piece in Foreign Affairs saying he wants to destroy democracy from within.
  • Jim_MillerJim_Miller Posts: 2,998
    BTW, if you haven't already, take a look at Nikki Haley's new son-in-law:
    https://people.com/all-about-nikki-haley-family-7965486

    Times have changed, especially in South Carolina, when that kind of match is considered unremarkable.
  • What do people think of Javier Milei?

    A Thatcher admiring anarcho capitalist, keen on Ukraine and Israel. Then there's a piece in Foreign Affairs saying he wants to destroy democracy from within.

    Will he invade the Malvin... er, I mean Falklands?
  • viewcodeviewcode Posts: 22,070

    What do people think of Javier Milei?

    A Thatcher admiring anarcho capitalist, keen on Ukraine and Israel. Then there's a piece in Foreign Affairs saying he wants to destroy democracy from within.

    https://www.sealionpress.co.uk/post/other-ideologies-anarcho-capitalism
    https://www.sealionpress.co.uk/post/other-ideologies-anarcho-capitalism-part-two

    IIUC he wants to legalise a market in human organs. So he's bad. We do not traffic in humans, in whole or in part.
  • MalmesburyMalmesbury Posts: 50,248

    What do people think of Javier Milei?

    A Thatcher admiring anarcho capitalist, keen on Ukraine and Israel. Then there's a piece in Foreign Affairs saying he wants to destroy democracy from within.

    Will he invade the Malvin... er, I mean Falklands?
    He advocates (sometimes) negotiations over the Falklands. What this means appears to vary - he is somewhat mercurial in his political positions.
  • HYUFDHYUFD Posts: 122,908

    What do people think of Javier Milei?

    A Thatcher admiring anarcho capitalist, keen on Ukraine and Israel. Then there's a piece in Foreign Affairs saying he wants to destroy democracy from within.

    Will he invade the Malvin... er, I mean Falklands?
    He advocates (sometimes) negotiations over the Falklands. What this means appears to vary - he is somewhat mercurial in his political positions.
    Which is rather less bellicose than the Kirchners and his predecessor as President on the issue
  • Andy_JSAndy_JS Posts: 32,549

    What do people think of Javier Milei?

    A Thatcher admiring anarcho capitalist, keen on Ukraine and Israel. Then there's a piece in Foreign Affairs saying he wants to destroy democracy from within.

    He likes Thatcher but still thinks Argentina should control the Falklands. Interesting combination.
  • MalmesburyMalmesbury Posts: 50,248
    HYUFD said:

    What do people think of Javier Milei?

    A Thatcher admiring anarcho capitalist, keen on Ukraine and Israel. Then there's a piece in Foreign Affairs saying he wants to destroy democracy from within.

    Will he invade the Malvin... er, I mean Falklands?
    He advocates (sometimes) negotiations over the Falklands. What this means appears to vary - he is somewhat mercurial in his political positions.
    Which is rather less bellicose than the Kirchners and his predecessor as President on the issue
    In the context of Argentine politics, it certainly *sounds* less hardline. But what that actually means is up for grabs with this guy.
  • MalmesburyMalmesbury Posts: 50,248
    Andy_JS said:

    What do people think of Javier Milei?

    A Thatcher admiring anarcho capitalist, keen on Ukraine and Israel. Then there's a piece in Foreign Affairs saying he wants to destroy democracy from within.

    He likes Thatcher but still thinks Argentina should control the Falklands. Interesting combination.
    Another one who admires Thatcher for her abilities, but not her policies.

    {ducks}

    In reading the history of the times, the USSR leadership were very impressed with her. Does that mean they were all secret Tories?
  • carnforth said:

    In news north of the border, today's Times article on Murrell's dodgy Jag contains the following gem:

    "It is understood Murrell, who quit his job earlier this year, was seen at the We Buy Any Car offices in Glasgow trying to sell the car."

    Moving money around, figurative AND literally.
  • Andy_JS said:

    What do people think of Javier Milei?

    A Thatcher admiring anarcho capitalist, keen on Ukraine and Israel. Then there's a piece in Foreign Affairs saying he wants to destroy democracy from within.

    He likes Thatcher but still thinks Argentina should control the Falklands. Interesting combination.
    Another one who admires Thatcher for her abilities, but not her policies.

    {ducks}

    In reading the history of the times, the USSR leadership were very impressed with her. Does that mean they were all secret Tories?
    Yes.
  • williamglennwilliamglenn Posts: 51,618

    HYUFD said:

    What do people think of Javier Milei?

    A Thatcher admiring anarcho capitalist, keen on Ukraine and Israel. Then there's a piece in Foreign Affairs saying he wants to destroy democracy from within.

    Will he invade the Malvin... er, I mean Falklands?
    He advocates (sometimes) negotiations over the Falklands. What this means appears to vary - he is somewhat mercurial in his political positions.
    Which is rather less bellicose than the Kirchners and his predecessor as President on the issue
    In the context of Argentine politics, it certainly *sounds* less hardline. But what that actually means is up for grabs with this guy.
    His inauguration speech today was quite strong. He focused on his plans to turn around the Argentinian economy.
  • viewcodeviewcode Posts: 22,070

    Andy_JS said:

    What do people think of Javier Milei?

    A Thatcher admiring anarcho capitalist, keen on Ukraine and Israel. Then there's a piece in Foreign Affairs saying he wants to destroy democracy from within.

    He likes Thatcher but still thinks Argentina should control the Falklands. Interesting combination.
    Another one who admires Thatcher for her abilities, but not her policies.

    {ducks}

    In reading the history of the times, the USSR leadership were very impressed with her. Does that mean they were all secret Tories?
    Yes. Andropov was a frequent visitor to the Southend-on-Sea Conservative Club, and was an utter bastard on the karaoke, yelling out the words to "Two Tribes" and thrashing about. "WHEN TOO TROBES GO TO WAH, ONE IS ALL THAT YOOO" - "Oh shut up Yuri, you're drunk"
  • Andy_JSAndy_JS Posts: 32,549
    The Tories could save an entire year of everyone's lives by calling an election as soon as possible, instead of stubbornly hanging on for another 12 months. So, for that reason, I hope they do collapse due to a civil war on the subject of Rwanda.
  • A Cadbury spokesperson said: "This year, a small percentage of Cadbury Roses products will not contain any Orange Cremes due to supply chain challenges.

    "But don't worry, you'll still be able to enjoy the same amount of chocolate as usual as we’ve replaced them with our much-loved Strawberry Cremes."

    https://www.thesun.co.uk/money/25004730/cadburys-christmas-roses-orange-creme-missing/
  • swing_voterswing_voter Posts: 1,464
    Andy_JS said:

    The Tories could save an entire year of everyone's lives by calling an election as soon as possible, instead of stubbornly hanging on for another 12 months. So, for that reason, I hope they do collapse due to a civil war on the subject of Rwanda.

    I wonder how the voters (say shy or soft tory) will feel about this clinging on for dear life... IMO it will harden voters resolve to give the Blues a bloody nose... I am off the get it done view (but then I dont vote Blue)
  • CiceroCicero Posts: 3,078

    Farage lost the jungle, yet is on the front pages.

    What a time we live in.

    More Political/Media intersection, see Media creatures Kohnson, Gove, Trump etc.

    Farage, "such a card", the former Russia Today presenter, still advocating disastrous policies for a better Britsin and scaring the Tories into a nervous breakdown.

    Russians got an absolute bargain there...
  • DecrepiterJohnLDecrepiterJohnL Posts: 27,886
    edited December 2023
    Andy_JS said:

    The Tories could save an entire year of everyone's lives by calling an election as soon as possible, instead of stubbornly hanging on for another 12 months. So, for that reason, I hope they do collapse due to a civil war on the subject of Rwanda.

    It is hard to understand quite how the government has got itself tied up on this Rwanda question which even if successful would deal only with a small, niche issue. Cos-playing Thatcher is once more in vogue but she was brought down by fundamental questions about our relationship with Europe and the poll tax, not by school milk which is the level Rishi is playing at. Stopping the boats is not about immigration, or even illegal immigration but about one route of illegal immigration. It's pathetic.
  • squareroot2squareroot2 Posts: 6,723

    Fan boy latest...



    Darren Grimes

    @darrengrimes_
    ·
    1h
    So sad to see Nigel not win it. But you know what? History will remember that man long after the jungle. He has proven himself as someone that didn’t complain, grumble or seek drama. A truly good man that loves his country and what he does. Certainly my winner anyway! #ImACeleb

    He was picking up 1.5 million. Not much to grumble about really.....
  • swing_voterswing_voter Posts: 1,464

    Fan boy latest...



    Darren Grimes

    @darrengrimes_
    ·
    1h
    So sad to see Nigel not win it. But you know what? History will remember that man long after the jungle. He has proven himself as someone that didn’t complain, grumble or seek drama. A truly good man that loves his country and what he does. Certainly my winner anyway! #ImACeleb

    He was picking up 1.5 million. Not much to grumble about really.....
    small change compared to most of the Conservative front bench
  • squareroot2squareroot2 Posts: 6,723
    What's all this about the SNP and a 95k Jag
    It's in the Spectatir but I am not a subscriber so cannot read it.
  • carnforthcarnforth Posts: 4,579

    What's all this about the SNP and a 95k Jag
    It's in the Spectatir but I am not a subscriber so cannot read it.

    Nicola Sturgeon’s husband Peter Murrell investigated over £95k car

    https://www.thetimes.co.uk/article/a4812e63-b424-4eca-aac7-e13cae0ba281?shareToken=46b4697c693c75a3f17dc9fc086687ea
  • PulpstarPulpstar Posts: 78,188
    Andy_JS said:

    What do people think of Javier Milei?

    A Thatcher admiring anarcho capitalist, keen on Ukraine and Israel. Then there's a piece in Foreign Affairs saying he wants to destroy democracy from within.

    He likes Thatcher but still thinks Argentina should control the Falklands. Interesting combination.
    Hasn't every Argentine leader said that for the last 40 years though ? Sabre rattling for domestic consumption, their real battle always is Argentina's inevitably horrendous finances.
  • swing_voterswing_voter Posts: 1,464
    Interesting week for Rishi, whats the biggest threat..COVID enquiry appearance, the vote on Rwanda or the return of Nigel F to the airwaves.... makes for some useful angles on Tory woes
  • nico679nico679 Posts: 6,275
    Apparently a leaked Home Office memo suggests that Sunaks plan is just amazing and the Bill will stop 99.5% of asylum seekers from getting a favourable court hearing !

    I mean do they seriously think the public are that stupid to believe this guff !
  • ydoethurydoethur Posts: 71,373
    carnforth said:

    What's all this about the SNP and a 95k Jag
    It's in the Spectatir but I am not a subscriber so cannot read it.

    Nicola Sturgeon’s husband Peter Murrell investigated over £95k car

    https://www.thetimes.co.uk/article/a4812e63-b424-4eca-aac7-e13cae0ba281?shareToken=46b4697c693c75a3f17dc9fc086687ea
    He absolutely should be.

    What sort of idiot would pay £95k for a piece of junk like a Jag?
  • ydoethurydoethur Posts: 71,373
    Pulpstar said:

    Andy_JS said:

    What do people think of Javier Milei?

    A Thatcher admiring anarcho capitalist, keen on Ukraine and Israel. Then there's a piece in Foreign Affairs saying he wants to destroy democracy from within.

    He likes Thatcher but still thinks Argentina should control the Falklands. Interesting combination.
    Hasn't every Argentine leader said that for the last 40 years though ? Sabre rattling for domestic consumption, their real battle always is Argentina's inevitably horrendous finances.
    They are taught in school that not only are the islands Argentinian but the people speak Spanish and are forced to stay with Britain against their will.

    It came as a real shock to the Argentine conscripts in 1982 to find nobody understood a word they said and that they were all so hated.
  • FoxyFoxy Posts: 48,631

    Fan boy latest...



    Darren Grimes

    @darrengrimes_
    ·
    1h
    So sad to see Nigel not win it. But you know what? History will remember that man long after the jungle. He has proven himself as someone that didn’t complain, grumble or seek drama. A truly good man that loves his country and what he does. Certainly my winner anyway! #ImACeleb

    He was picking up 1.5 million. Not much to grumble about really.....
    He should meet Coutts criteria now.
  • ydoethurydoethur Posts: 71,373
    nico679 said:

    Apparently a leaked Home Office memo suggests that Sunaks plan is just amazing and the Bill will stop 99.5% of asylum seekers from getting a favourable court hearing !

    I mean do they seriously think the public are that stupid to believe this guff !

    When they said 'asylum seekers,' what sort of asylum did they have in mind for themselves?
  • ydoethur said:

    carnforth said:

    What's all this about the SNP and a 95k Jag
    It's in the Spectatir but I am not a subscriber so cannot read it.

    Nicola Sturgeon’s husband Peter Murrell investigated over £95k car

    https://www.thetimes.co.uk/article/a4812e63-b424-4eca-aac7-e13cae0ba281?shareToken=46b4697c693c75a3f17dc9fc086687ea
    He absolutely should be.

    What sort of idiot would pay £95k for a piece of junk like a Jag?
    WeBuyAnyCar is a great way to not realise full market value of your car.

    The cut they take is massive. The Wonga of the second hand car market.
This discussion has been closed.