A city which, it turns out, is doing that fantastic thing we have previously identified on PB - “fulfilling all your most cliched tourist expectations” - like going to Paris and finding an impossibly rude waiter who flamboyantly shrugs at you, while wearing a beret
In Vancouver’s case: the expectation fulfilled is “being ridiculously scenic and obviously liveable”
Also, cracking oysters. Of COURSE it would have great oysters
The strange orange bread dipping sauce in the little shallow jar is a reduction of lobster shells in butter - notably delicious
Before you declare a place 'liveable' its better to check housing prices rather than the quality of the oysters.
And if you cannot get a job or cannot afford somewhere to live then a place isn't liveable.
I suppose those people who were lucky enough to buy a house in London when it was affordable and whose idea of northern England is still rather 1980s might view things differently.
That's all true, but there is no killer reason to go TO Mansfield town centre, except maybe shopping. So people live on the surrounding estates, and go somewhere else, whether for work or play.
Though to add to my other post, it also has a football club which is in League One. Also several top end golf clubs in the area, and the Centre Parks holiday village.
Events they have done recently were the Le Mansfield electric car thing which I liked the branding for, and UK Tour cycle stage, which was a sick, ironic joke.
Center Parcs, not Centre Parks. Very important.
I live about 1 mile from the Warminster Forest Centre Parcs. Most amusing thing for me it the enormous fence round the entire site, topped with razor wire. I'm sure its intended to keep the plebs out (i.e. me) but it sure does look like a POW camp from the outside. And I hear the prices for stuff inside are insane, plus a definite sense that once in, you are not meant to leave...
You can check out but you can never leave !!!
Center Parcs seem to be very expensive once you start adding the activities.
I have never been but I cannot see the appeal of it, particularly at their insane prices. You can go abroad and do similar activities for less without being locked in a compound in Mansfield.
And, at least abroad, you have a far better chance of getting decent weather.
I too like Vancouver. Watching the seaplanes take off and land, travelling around on the trams, and sitting by the Winter Olympics memorial. On my journey to the airport the cab driver ( an African-Canadian) was spitting feathers at the driving of the Chinese - especially the women.
The Haitian community in Florida is the largest in the US, accounting for around 2% of the population, according to Wikipedia.
Republicans attacking Haitians 55 days before the election is the dumbest political strategy since nominating a convicted felon. There is a significant Haitian population in Florida, and they are pissed. https://x.com/cbouzy/status/1833443893213311146
Parents who give grown-up children and their partners large sums of money are increasingly having to use lawyers to claw it back after relationship breakdowns.
Many parents will help their children on the housing ladder through gifts or loans. However, the Bank of Mum and Dad is increasingly hiring lawyers to help them retrieve the sums from their child’s former partner or spouse following a split.
Disputes typically involve sums of over £50,000, lawyers said. However Kate Booth, of law firm Brindley Twist Tafft & James, has been involved in disputes over sums worth as much as £1m.
Once the gift has been made, parents can have a hard time getting their money back.
The Bank of Mum and Dad is behind almost half of first-time home purchases by buyers in their 20s with the average sum given standing at £25,000, according to analysis by the Institute for Fiscal Studies.
High interest rates have also meant that many first-time buyers often cannot afford a property purchase without the income of a partner.
Starmer looked very uncomfortable a few weeks ago when he insisted that the risk of reoffending was being “managed”. How? By whom? Does that mean he’ll take responsibility for any serious crimes that result from the policy?
The facts show that prison is an incredibly inefficient way of "treating" an offender. A significant minority go on to offend again having spent the correct time in jail despite the no doubt well meaning efforts of the probation service when they get out.
The real test is not whether some of these early releasers offend, of course they will, but will they offend more often than those that complete their sentence in the usual way? Because if the percentage is the same or lower it rather begs the question what the hell they were doing in prison in the first place.
This misses one of the major advantages of prison, namely that whilst inside, people rarely manage to reoffend. There is this presumption that people can always be fixed - sometimes they can, unfortunately sometimes they can't.
In the long run, it's probably cheaper to give out very long sentences to say burglars on their third offence than to endure the constant cycles of crime, arrest, prosecution, a few months inside, reoffending which currently go on.
I would make prison fairly unpleasant, make the sentences for a first offence short, with lots of support and rehabilitation available - but make it clear than if you're up in front of the beak for a third offence, we're done with you, it's 20 years of bread and water. It would cost us a modest amount in prison places, but permanently jailing say the 100k most persistent low to medium level offenders would massively reduce crime, yielding savings which would probably more than pay for the prison places.
And there's a huge inconsistency between "making prison fairly unpleasant", and having "lots of support and rehabilitation available".
I'm thinking - prison = unpleasant so you don't want to be there, but then really making an effort to get offenders reintegrated into society on release, particularly for first time offenders. I don't think that's inconsistent.
So, pensioners get more of an uplift for next year than my salary will increase by, and I'll be taxed more to pay for it?
How is that sustainable, yet alone fair?
Sharon Graham from UNITE, and Labour's foremost thinker, Zarah Sultana, have said a wealth tax is the solution. So you wouldn't have to pay for it. If they just made the wealthiest pay their fair share.
Interesting to see the pumped storage stash it away at this time of day.
Octopus giving it away for free again, even as we speak. Can just about squeeze a few more electrons in the car.
It's annoying they have the free electricity periods while I am at work and can't do anything about it. I have saved about 15p so far. One time it was entirely fortuitous that I used more than usual, and the other was a Sunday when I was in, so I could do some batch cooking and put the washing machine on
AFAIK not a single PBer is calling for the banning of cash. Many of us don’t use it and think it pointless, inconvenient, environmentally wasteful, risky and time-consuming, but that is rather a different thing.
There are however many weirdo brown-gloved cash-fetishists on here who wish to make draconian restrictions on private businesses and force them to accept an antiquated mode of barter at their own expense, despite they and their customers being happily cashless.
Funny old world.
If you don't have universal, or near-universal, acceptance of cash in the country, then it rapidly becomes pointless as business will not take it. As you well know.
And cash is useful for many people; not for you, perhaps, but others.
Really?
Would you force businesses to accept cash? And, if so, would you apply such a law to online businesses or only those that have bricks & mortar premises?
We can barely get them to accept Scottish banknotes.
Almost no businesses near me in north London accept Scottish money – chiefly because their staff cannot tell a real note from a fake. This has been the case for as long as I can remember.
Just asking.
Why are you wandering around North London trying to make people accept Scottish Banknotes?
A city which, it turns out, is doing that fantastic thing we have previously identified on PB - “fulfilling all your most cliched tourist expectations” - like going to Paris and finding an impossibly rude waiter who flamboyantly shrugs at you, while wearing a beret
In Vancouver’s case: the expectation fulfilled is “being ridiculously scenic and obviously liveable”
Also, cracking oysters. Of COURSE it would have great oysters
The strange orange bread dipping sauce in the little shallow jar is a reduction of lobster shells in butter - notably delicious
Vancouver is said to have one of the most picturesque cricket grounds in the world. Geoff Boycott mentioned it on Test Match Special a few years ago.
AFAIK not a single PBer is calling for the banning of cash. Many of us don’t use it and think it pointless, inconvenient, environmentally wasteful, risky and time-consuming, but that is rather a different thing.
There are however many weirdo brown-gloved cash-fetishists on here who wish to make draconian restrictions on private businesses and force them to accept an antiquated mode of barter at their own expense, despite they and their customers being happily cashless.
Funny old world.
If you don't have universal, or near-universal, acceptance of cash in the country, then it rapidly becomes pointless as business will not take it. As you well know.
And cash is useful for many people; not for you, perhaps, but others.
Really?
Would you force businesses to accept cash? And, if so, would you apply such a law to online businesses or only those that have bricks & mortar premises?
We can barely get them to accept Scottish banknotes.
Almost no businesses near me in north London accept Scottish money – chiefly because their staff cannot tell a real note from a fake. This has been the case for as long as I can remember.
Just asking.
Why are you wandering around North London trying to make people accept Scottish Banknotes?
He’s helping me out. Got the ink right, this time, I think…
I’ve been here 12 hours but already I’m thinking, wow, what a blessed place. Like the nicest city in the USA - minus the guns (but they do have some homeless)
Shame it’s a bit cool and grey - tho I note they do get 2,000 hours of annual sunshine, which places it well ahead of London and about the same as Lyon or Milan
Yes. Good cycling infrastructure too, which makes it very unusual for North America.
And a very walkable downtown
And superb sweet native oysters are £2 a pop in a fairly posh local oyster bar (3 minutes from my hotel). And they offer them with shallot mignonette, ketchup and horseradish, and ponzu
off topic but the national grid current (sic) wholesale price is 48p per MWh
Worth noting that electricity has the potential to alternate in price and if you buy at the wrong time it really hertz. That's behind my resistance to being inducted into that circuit even in spare moments working from Ohm.
Letby’s conviction is unsafe, says Boris Johnson’s former science adviser Evidence presented to the jury was so flawed as to make it not a fair trial, argues James Phillips ... “It was not, and is not, apparent to me that anyone in the chain of events leading from Letby being placed under suspicion by the consultants to the three-judge appeal being turned down had the skillset or perspective needed to detect potentially catastrophically weak links in this web of evidential relationships.” https://www.telegraph.co.uk/news/2024/09/09/lucy-letby-conviction-unsafe-says-boris-johnson-adviser/ (£££)
It’s not their job to weigh the evidence
The consultants are supposed to protect patients
The prosecution builds a case (I’m sure they were looking for weak links)
The judges assess whether the law has been followed
The jury makes their decision
Which does make one wonder about improvements.
If no one in the chain could check the use of statistical evidence…
Brings to mind some convictions that turned out to be flawed - the DNA evidence didn’t actually prove beyond reasonable doubt.
I’ve not spent a huge amount of time thinking about this.
But I thought the criticism was of the partial selection of the statistical evidence *presented to the jury*.
Not that it was wrong, but that it was partial and designed to convince the jury of the case.
And you can’t take a single piece of evidence in isolation and say “this didn’t work therefore the conviction is flawed”. Juries form their view based on the totality of evidence
Like everyone else I have not read the transcripts of the trial, but SFAICS there is a regular confusion about statistical evidence.
At the trial evidence was presented that in each of the alleged incidents (murder and attempted murder) Letby was on duty in a material place; and that as a matter of fact no other person was on duty at all or significant numbers of times at these incidents.
This is not statistical evidence, it is ordinary factual evidence. Without it there could have been no case as if she could not be shown to be present there is no case to answer in each case.
The critics now are saying: statistical evidence was not presented of the rotas more generally, about every possible incident of unexpected harm etc to a child, and this may have shown (I suppose) either other murderers as possible suspects, or a pattern to show the deaths were not criminal.
The defence are entitled to go down that track and didn't. Probably because it could not work. The prosecution would not have wanted to go there as it was not part of their case.
That IS statistical evidence - effectively seeking to demonstrate certainty.
It's been argued that the tabulation in question was selective and that the full tabulation has other persons as possible suspects, as indeed one would expect from random chance - which therefore includes Letby. If Letby's correlation canm be explained as chance ...
There's also a suggestion that the data are unreliable (bad recording, last minute changes and swaps, early/late shift changeovers).
Thirty burglaries take place in town X in the course of a year. There is video evidence that Burglar Bill is present in the room during the hours it happens for 20 of them, and some other corroborating evidence. He is charged with 20 burglaries. His defence is that there is no evidence that he was present at the other 10 so he is innocent of the 20. The jury convicts.
The Letby rota evidence is merely evidence that she was in the relevant place at the relevant time. This is factual, not statistical. The trial is the place to argue about accuracy etc.
The difference is that Mr Bill is not supposed to be in those places. That's very different from the hospital. A better analogy would be that Mr Bill was in the city, or perhaps the suburb, in question; but, however, worked there anyway ...
The statistical argument that I have seen is that when the *full* rota evidence is examined, more than one nurse is present at all the times of concern; but equally also that this can happen by chance, as it indeed does. The implication is that the data have been pruned, for whatever reason or on what basis is unclear.
Edit: that is so surprising an assertion that it deserves examination, which apparently it did not at the trial.
A city which, it turns out, is doing that fantastic thing we have previously identified on PB - “fulfilling all your most cliched tourist expectations” - like going to Paris and finding an impossibly rude waiter who flamboyantly shrugs at you, while wearing a beret
In Vancouver’s case: the expectation fulfilled is “being ridiculously scenic and obviously liveable”
Also, cracking oysters. Of COURSE it would have great oysters
The strange orange bread dipping sauce in the little shallow jar is a reduction of lobster shells in butter - notably delicious
Before you declare a place 'liveable' its better to check housing prices rather than the quality of the oysters.
And if you cannot get a job or cannot afford somewhere to live then a place isn't liveable.
I suppose those people who were lucky enough to buy a house in London when it was affordable and whose idea of northern England is still rather 1980s might view things differently.
That's all true, but there is no killer reason to go TO Mansfield town centre, except maybe shopping. So people live on the surrounding estates, and go somewhere else, whether for work or play.
Though to add to my other post, it also has a football club which is in League One. Also several top end golf clubs in the area, and the Centre Parks holiday village.
Events they have done recently were the Le Mansfield electric car thing which I liked the branding for, and UK Tour cycle stage, which was a sick, ironic joke.
Center Parcs, not Centre Parks. Very important.
I live about 1 mile from the Warminster Forest Centre Parcs. Most amusing thing for me it the enormous fence round the entire site, topped with razor wire. I'm sure its intended to keep the plebs out (i.e. me) but it sure does look like a POW camp from the outside. And I hear the prices for stuff inside are insane, plus a definite sense that once in, you are not meant to leave...
2 million people a year spending thousands just to experience a 15-minute city and low traffic neighbourhood.
10mph speed limit.
Don't prejudice your own argument .
Pretty much every single housing development built since 1965 is a low-traffic neighbourhood, as you know ! They are where 99% of anti-LTN campaigners live.
This is reason 694 why the "war on cars" conspiraloon lobby are so funny, and in the long term we don't need to worry about them.
Even I wouldn't go so far as a "10mph limit in residential areas". Except as a mandatory requirement for any vehicle make starting with L (rhyming slang for Hell), such as Land Rovers or Lamborghinis. There is perhaps an argument for applying EAPC regulations to such ie power assistance cuts out at 25kph.
Interesting to see the pumped storage stash it away at this time of day.
Octopus giving it away for free again, even as we speak. Can just about squeeze a few more electrons in the car.
It's annoying they have the free electricity periods while I am at work and can't do anything about it. I have saved about 15p so far. One time it was entirely fortuitous that I used more than usual, and the other was a Sunday when I was in, so I could do some batch cooking and put the washing machine on
The first free electricity period caught PodPoint on the hop when everybody tried at once to charge manually and crashed their servers. After that they sent an email begging people to change their automatic charging schedules in advance rather than logging on at the time. This brave new world of energy usage encouragement/discouragement isn't without its teething troubles.
(I spent an hour hoovering on the Sunday as the car was already fully charged. The missus was surprised but gratified)
A city which, it turns out, is doing that fantastic thing we have previously identified on PB - “fulfilling all your most cliched tourist expectations” - like going to Paris and finding an impossibly rude waiter who flamboyantly shrugs at you, while wearing a beret
In Vancouver’s case: the expectation fulfilled is “being ridiculously scenic and obviously liveable”
Also, cracking oysters. Of COURSE it would have great oysters
The strange orange bread dipping sauce in the little shallow jar is a reduction of lobster shells in butter - notably delicious
Vancouver is said to have one of the most picturesque cricket grounds in the world. Geoff Boycott mentioned it on Test Match Special a few years ago.
This is the most picturesque cricket ground I umpired a match on, back in my umpiring-the-under13s days.
AFAIK not a single PBer is calling for the banning of cash. Many of us don’t use it and think it pointless, inconvenient, environmentally wasteful, risky and time-consuming, but that is rather a different thing.
There are however many weirdo brown-gloved cash-fetishists on here who wish to make draconian restrictions on private businesses and force them to accept an antiquated mode of barter at their own expense, despite they and their customers being happily cashless.
Funny old world.
If you don't have universal, or near-universal, acceptance of cash in the country, then it rapidly becomes pointless as business will not take it. As you well know.
And cash is useful for many people; not for you, perhaps, but others.
Really?
Would you force businesses to accept cash? And, if so, would you apply such a law to online businesses or only those that have bricks & mortar premises?
We can barely get them to accept Scottish banknotes.
Almost no businesses near me in north London accept Scottish money – chiefly because their staff cannot tell a real note from a fake. This has been the case for as long as I can remember.
Just asking.
Why are you wandering around North London trying to make people accept Scottish Banknotes?
I’m not. The clue is in the signs in pubs etc that say: no Scottish money accepted.
off topic but the national grid current (sic) wholesale price is 48p per MWh
Worth noting that electricity has the potential to alternate in price and if you buy at the wrong time it really hertz. That's behind my resistance to being inducted into that circuit even in spare moments working from Ohm.
Ooh some bright spark amping up the electricity puns. You should be on the comedy circuit.
Letby’s conviction is unsafe, says Boris Johnson’s former science adviser Evidence presented to the jury was so flawed as to make it not a fair trial, argues James Phillips ... “It was not, and is not, apparent to me that anyone in the chain of events leading from Letby being placed under suspicion by the consultants to the three-judge appeal being turned down had the skillset or perspective needed to detect potentially catastrophically weak links in this web of evidential relationships.” https://www.telegraph.co.uk/news/2024/09/09/lucy-letby-conviction-unsafe-says-boris-johnson-adviser/ (£££)
Not in a position to read this. If anyone does, please let us know if the article contains anything that could properly be described as an argument based on the actual evidence.
Thanks. Nothing new. He even relies on the fact that there is no smoking gun, and that several cumulative threads of evidence are used as if that makes it unsafe. he assumes that scientists come to false conclusions quite easily and ignores the fact that the defence didn't call their own expert evidence. He is highly misleading on the statistics question. He claims there are several 'grounds' for an appeal, but cannot produce a sentence or short paragraph as an instance. All the critics fall down on the issue of focussing their points precisely.
But he's a neuroscientist, so presumably not a specialist statistician? As I understand it, statisticians are also unhappy. And it is a journalistic piece summarised and partly quoted rather than an op-ed essay.
In a journalistic piece you put, very simply, your best points. Your best points are the bulls eye objections, the ones which render it clear to the reader that you have a specific point or points in the face of a series of convictions after a 10 month trial. This is lacking, and is lacking generally in the ctirics I have read, including the oft cited New Yorker article.
But you're conflating the journalist with the scientist here. The journo has his or her different understanding of what is interesting and comprehensible.
I'm confident Badenoch will win the election. She's certainly the best candidate imo.
Given the low expectations people seem to have, including many non conservatives, I think whoever wins can only surprise on the upside.
Congratulations, you have just triggered a KLAXON!
Really, I know what a Klaxon is but I am not sure what it means in this context.
Why, the surprise on the upside KLAXON of course. Memories of the halcyon early days of Truss.
Arguably Truss did surprise on the upside. 40 days to self combust with a ten day time out for the Queen to die was a remarkable achievement. I was expecting her to take at least a year.
off topic but the national grid current (sic) wholesale price is 48p per MWh
Worth noting that electricity has the potential to alternate in price and if you buy at the wrong time it really hertz. That's behind my resistance to being inducted into that circuit even in spare moments working from Ohm.
Ooh some bright spark amping up the electricity puns. You should be on the comedy circuit.
off topic but the national grid current (sic) wholesale price is 48p per MWh
Worth noting that electricity has the potential to alternate in price and if you buy at the wrong time it really hertz. That's behind my resistance to being inducted into that circuit even in spare moments working from Ohm.
Ooh some bright spark amping up the electricity puns. You should be on the comedy circuit.
Interesting to see the pumped storage stash it away at this time of day.
The government ran a renewables auction the other day paying £75 - £80 per MWh.
The average price over the past week has been £85.50 per MWh, and £70.28 over the past year.
Large amounts of wind on the grid will lead to large fluctuations in the wholesale price of electricity. This creates an arbitrage opportunity for storage, and an opportunity for any industry that can use intermittent supplies of very cheap electricity.
Letby’s conviction is unsafe, says Boris Johnson’s former science adviser Evidence presented to the jury was so flawed as to make it not a fair trial, argues James Phillips ... “It was not, and is not, apparent to me that anyone in the chain of events leading from Letby being placed under suspicion by the consultants to the three-judge appeal being turned down had the skillset or perspective needed to detect potentially catastrophically weak links in this web of evidential relationships.” https://www.telegraph.co.uk/news/2024/09/09/lucy-letby-conviction-unsafe-says-boris-johnson-adviser/ (£££)
It’s not their job to weigh the evidence
The consultants are supposed to protect patients
The prosecution builds a case (I’m sure they were looking for weak links)
The judges assess whether the law has been followed
The jury makes their decision
Which does make one wonder about improvements.
If no one in the chain could check the use of statistical evidence…
Brings to mind some convictions that turned out to be flawed - the DNA evidence didn’t actually prove beyond reasonable doubt.
I’ve not spent a huge amount of time thinking about this.
But I thought the criticism was of the partial selection of the statistical evidence *presented to the jury*.
Not that it was wrong, but that it was partial and designed to convince the jury of the case.
And you can’t take a single piece of evidence in isolation and say “this didn’t work therefore the conviction is flawed”. Juries form their view based on the totality of evidence
Like everyone else I have not read the transcripts of the trial, but SFAICS there is a regular confusion about statistical evidence.
At the trial evidence was presented that in each of the alleged incidents (murder and attempted murder) Letby was on duty in a material place; and that as a matter of fact no other person was on duty at all or significant numbers of times at these incidents.
This is not statistical evidence, it is ordinary factual evidence. Without it there could have been no case as if she could not be shown to be present there is no case to answer in each case.
The critics now are saying: statistical evidence was not presented of the rotas more generally, about every possible incident of unexpected harm etc to a child, and this may have shown (I suppose) either other murderers as possible suspects, or a pattern to show the deaths were not criminal.
The defence are entitled to go down that track and didn't. Probably because it could not work. The prosecution would not have wanted to go there as it was not part of their case.
That IS statistical evidence - effectively seeking to demonstrate certainty.
It's been argued that the tabulation in question was selective and that the full tabulation has other persons as possible suspects, as indeed one would expect from random chance - which therefore includes Letby. If Letby's correlation canm be explained as chance ...
There's also a suggestion that the data are unreliable (bad recording, last minute changes and swaps, early/late shift changeovers).
Thirty burglaries take place in town X in the course of a year. There is video evidence that Burglar Bill is present in the room during the hours it happens for 20 of them, and some other corroborating evidence. He is charged with 20 burglaries. His defence is that there is no evidence that he was present at the other 10 so he is innocent of the 20. The jury convicts.
The Letby rota evidence is merely evidence that she was in the relevant place at the relevant time. This is factual, not statistical. The trial is the place to argue about accuracy etc.
The difference is that Mr Bill is not supposed to be in those places. That's very different from the hospital. A better analogy would be that Mr Bill was in the city, or perhaps the suburb, in question; but, however, worked there anyway ...
The statistical argument that I have seen is that when the *full* rota evidence is examined, more than one nurse is present at all the times of concern; but equally also that this can happen by chance, as it indeed does. The implication is that the data have been pruned, for whatever reason or on what basis is unclear.
Edit: that is so surprising an assertion that it deserves examination, which apparently it did not at the trial.
Yes, the rota pieces point out that you can cherry pick a random distribution to find deaths for which one person is more present than any other. And then pick a different set of deaths to finger a different person.
But what I've not seen is a convincing argument that this was done and was important to the trial (and also that there was another set of similarly suspicious/unexplained deaths that would enable pointing to someone else*). If there was then the defence were complete numpties not to do this themselves and present it. I don't rule out that possibility!
*something I don't know - were all deaths in the period assessed and classified as understood/unexplained/suspicious. Where there were suspicious test results, were these tests also carried out on other unexplained deaths?
Off topic, but this is the Eastern edge of Canary Wharf today.
Every building in shot has gone up in the last couple of years. All the new building is residential.
In at least this one corner of Britain there are no NIMBYs, no construction drought, and a constant volume of high quality supply coming on-stream.
Canary Wharf is much derided, and no it’s not up there with Manhattan for skyscrapers or Bruges for waterside architecture, but its sheer scale and economic contribution from zero in the 80s to now is quite phenomenal. Here are a few numbers:
Area: 0.2 square miles (roughly equal to the Vatican) Population: 18,000 (about half of Monaco) Full time jobs: 120,000 Annual visitors: 67 million GDP: estimates vary widely between an unrealistically low £2bn (equivalent to San Marino) to an optimistic c.40 billion, or 2 Macaus.
Tactically I worry that Labour has made a mistake on WFA. Reducing triple lock (perhaps make it 1% vs. 2.5%) would probably save more and would be much less noticeable to pensioners.
(If I've got my sums right, we spend £125bn on state pension. So reducing uplift to 1% in a single year (of low inflation) = £~1.7bn.)
Why am I now told, whenever I board a train, that my behaviour will not be tolerated?
Did you do a me when the conductor told us the train was cancelled due to excess heat causing the tracks to buckle and I replied in my best Brian Blessed voice
'For fuck's sake, we built the Cairo to Khartoum railway.'
AFAIK not a single PBer is calling for the banning of cash. Many of us don’t use it and think it pointless, inconvenient, environmentally wasteful, risky and time-consuming, but that is rather a different thing.
There are however many weirdo brown-gloved cash-fetishists on here who wish to make draconian restrictions on private businesses and force them to accept an antiquated mode of barter at their own expense, despite they and their customers being happily cashless.
Funny old world.
If you don't have universal, or near-universal, acceptance of cash in the country, then it rapidly becomes pointless as business will not take it. As you well know.
And cash is useful for many people; not for you, perhaps, but others.
Really?
Would you force businesses to accept cash? And, if so, would you apply such a law to online businesses or only those that have bricks & mortar premises?
We can barely get them to accept Scottish banknotes.
Almost no businesses near me in north London accept Scottish money – chiefly because their staff cannot tell a real note from a fake. This has been the case for as long as I can remember.
Just asking.
Why are you wandering around North London trying to make people accept Scottish Banknotes?
This is almost 3 Sizewell C nuclear power-stations.
In 27 years, government has spent more than £71bn on winter fuel payments: money that has quite literally gone up in smoke. Insulation and quality housing are the investments this country should make.
Off topic, but this is the Eastern edge of Canary Wharf today.
Every building in shot has gone up in the last couple of years. All the new building is residential.
In at least this one corner of Britain there are no NIMBYs, no construction drought, and a constant volume of high quality supply coming on-stream.
Presumably the high quality is on the inside?
The new high rise buildings are actually pretty good. The photo doesn’t really do them justice. They are well landscaped, the street geography is decent - walkable narrow streets, shops on the ground floor, welcoming entrance lobbies - the buildings have large windows and attractive scale. Much better than the crap erected in the 1990s and noughties.
Off topic, but this is the Eastern edge of Canary Wharf today.
Every building in shot has gone up in the last couple of years. All the new building is residential.
In at least this one corner of Britain there are no NIMBYs, no construction drought, and a constant volume of high quality supply coming on-stream.
I lived for a year on Landon's Close on the eastern side of the Isle of Dogs in 1993/4. When I ran past last year, I was glad to see that the flat still exists, although the scenery has fairly radically changed. I'm glad to see that the rather sad expanse of water outside the flat is now a marina.
I thought about buying a nearby flat. Perhaps I should have - and I wonder what the return would have been over 30 years?
This is almost 3 Sizewell C nuclear power-stations.
In 27 years, government has spent more than £71bn on winter fuel payments: money that has quite literally gone up in smoke. Insulation and quality housing are the investments this country should make.
This is almost 3 Sizewell C nuclear power-stations.
In 27 years, government has spent more than £71bn on winter fuel payments: money that has quite literally gone up in smoke. Insulation and quality housing are the investments this country should make.
Interesting to see the pumped storage stash it away at this time of day.
Octopus giving it away for free again, even as we speak. Can just about squeeze a few more electrons in the car.
It's annoying they have the free electricity periods while I am at work and can't do anything about it. I have saved about 15p so far. One time it was entirely fortuitous that I used more than usual, and the other was a Sunday when I was in, so I could do some batch cooking and put the washing machine on
Isn’t that the whole point, that the price goes down precisely at times when few people are in a position to do anything about it?
Can you get a few cheap app-controlled timer switches, connected to appliances which can work remotely? Get a handful of power banks that you can set remotely to start charging when the price goes to zero.
I'm confident Badenoch will win the election. She's certainly the best candidate imo.
Given the low expectations people seem to have, including many non conservatives, I think whoever wins can only surprise on the upside.
Congratulations, you have just triggered a KLAXON!
Really, I know what a Klaxon is but I am not sure what it means in this context.
Why, the surprise on the upside KLAXON of course. Memories of the halcyon early days of Truss.
Arguably Truss did surprise on the upside. 40 days to self combust with a ten day time out for the Queen to die was a remarkable achievement. I was expecting her to take at least a year.
This does have a weird sort of Lady Jane Grey feel about it, especially as Liz Truss was politically "beheaded", albeit not at the age of approximately 16.
It's not just David Davis asking questions about this case.
"Letby’s conviction is unsafe, says Boris Johnson’s former science adviser Evidence presented to the jury was so flawed as to make it not a fair trial, argues James Phillips"
This is almost 3 Sizewell C nuclear power-stations.
In 27 years, government has spent more than £71bn on winter fuel payments: money that has quite literally gone up in smoke. Insulation and quality housing are the investments this country should make.
This is almost 3 Sizewell C nuclear power-stations.
In 27 years, government has spent more than £71bn on winter fuel payments: money that has quite literally gone up in smoke. Insulation and quality housing are the investments this country should make.
This is almost 3 Sizewell C nuclear power-stations.
In 27 years, government has spent more than £71bn on winter fuel payments: money that has quite literally gone up in smoke. Insulation and quality housing are the investments this country should make.
Why am I now told, whenever I board a train, that my behaviour will not be tolerated?
Did you do a me when the conductor told us the train was cancelled due to excess heat causing the tracks to buckle and I replied in my best Brian Blessed voice
'For fuck's sake, we built the Cairo to Khartoum railway.'
The Dubai Metro has been open for 15 years, and we’ve never seen a buckled track on it. They’ve just built some heavy rail tracks as well, and they seem to perfectly fine and straight despite the summer here.
It's not just David Davis asking questions about this case.
"Letby’s conviction is unsafe, says Boris Johnson’s former science adviser Evidence presented to the jury was so flawed as to make it not a fair trial, argues James Phillips"
It's not just David Davis asking questions about this case.
"Letby’s conviction is unsafe, says Boris Johnson’s former science adviser Evidence presented to the jury was so flawed as to make it not a fair trial, argues James Phillips"
I have little idea about whether Letby is guilty or not; and she is perhaps the only person who knows for sure. There are questions, but you can always raise questions about such cases, especially if you choose to be economical with the evidence. Or not.
More interesting is the way this case in particular has caught the public's attention, when (say) Beverley Allitt's did not.
This is almost 3 Sizewell C nuclear power-stations.
In 27 years, government has spent more than £71bn on winter fuel payments: money that has quite literally gone up in smoke. Insulation and quality housing are the investments this country should make.
Tactically I worry that Labour has made a mistake on WFA. Reducing triple lock (perhaps make it 1% vs. 2.5%) would probably save more and would be much less noticeable to pensioners.
(If I've got my sums right, we spend £125bn on state pension. So reducing uplift to 1% in a single year (of low inflation) = £~1.7bn.)
The problem there is that money needed to be found immediately - hence the attack on the only large bit of money not paid out yet..
It's not just David Davis asking questions about this case.
"Letby’s conviction is unsafe, says Boris Johnson’s former science adviser Evidence presented to the jury was so flawed as to make it not a fair trial, argues James Phillips"
This is almost 3 Sizewell C nuclear power-stations.
In 27 years, government has spent more than £71bn on winter fuel payments: money that has quite literally gone up in smoke. Insulation and quality housing are the investments this country should make.
Harris has a 3% of lead in North Carolina. Although with 30 EC votes for Florida, if she wins that, the rest is chaff.
One very tricky element of FL is the sheer volume of oldies that live there. Of course Obama did carry the state at least once, so it shouldn't be seen as unobtainable. But the snowbirds and their ilk aren't usually very DEM friendly.
Harris has a 3% of lead in North Carolina. Although with 30 EC votes for Florida, if she wins that, the rest is chaff.
That's the best poll for Harris for quite a while - but she's still behind in Florida.
If she loses Florida and Texas narrowly then she could be on track to lose the Electoral College while winning the popular vote by a huge margin.
If she wins North Carolina, then Trump is in a world of pain. His routes to the White House get seriously choked.
The margin of error in that FLorida poll is 2%. So it could be a dead heat. Trump hasn't planned on spending his limited resources on defending his home town. Every dollar spent there isn't spent in Pennsylvania. Meanwhile, Harris has huge enthusiasm in the state in terms of GOTV.
Off topic, but this is the Eastern edge of Canary Wharf today.
Every building in shot has gone up in the last couple of years. All the new building is residential.
In at least this one corner of Britain there are no NIMBYs, no construction drought, and a constant volume of high quality supply coming on-stream.
I lived for a year on Landon's Close on the eastern side of the Isle of Dogs in 1993/4. When I ran past last year, I was glad to see that the flat still exists, although the scenery has fairly radically changed. I'm glad to see that the rather sad expanse of water outside the flat is now a marina.
I thought about buying a nearby flat. Perhaps I should have - and I wonder what the return would have been over 30 years?
Another notable change recently, though I don’t know if it extends to your marina. The dock water has been cleaned up so much it’s bordering on crystal clear. You can see 2 or more metres down. One of the docks is now open for swimming. It’s clear enough that they could erect a very passable artificial beach with shipped in sand and I’d swim there.
They’ve also learned from their early mistakes. In the original estate walking from a to b involves an obstacle course of bridges, underground malls, escalators and one way road systems. In the newer developments like Wood Wharf it’s a proper town grid, everything on one level, pavements and zebra crossings.
A city which, it turns out, is doing that fantastic thing we have previously identified on PB - “fulfilling all your most cliched tourist expectations” - like going to Paris and finding an impossibly rude waiter who flamboyantly shrugs at you, while wearing a beret
In Vancouver’s case: the expectation fulfilled is “being ridiculously scenic and obviously liveable”
Also, cracking oysters. Of COURSE it would have great oysters
The strange orange bread dipping sauce in the little shallow jar is a reduction of lobster shells in butter - notably delicious
Vancouver is said to have one of the most picturesque cricket grounds in the world. Geoff Boycott mentioned it on Test Match Special a few years ago.
This is the most picturesque cricket ground I umpired a match on, back in my umpiring-the-under13s days.
I'm a big fan of the Valley of the Rocks cricket ground (Lynton and Lynmouth cricket club).
Harris has a 3% of lead in North Carolina. Although with 30 EC votes for Florida, if she wins that, the rest is chaff.
One very tricky element of FL is the sheer volume of oldies that live there. Of course Obama did carry the state at least once, so it shouldn't be seen as unobtainable. But the snowbirds and their ilk aren't usually very DEM friendly.
But having moved to get the winter sun on their weary bones, they are of a rather more adventurous spirit than the folks they left behind. Who have heart attacks shovelling winter snow.
This is almost 3 Sizewell C nuclear power-stations.
In 27 years, government has spent more than £71bn on winter fuel payments: money that has quite literally gone up in smoke. Insulation and quality housing are the investments this country should make.
It's not just David Davis asking questions about this case.
"Letby’s conviction is unsafe, says Boris Johnson’s former science adviser Evidence presented to the jury was so flawed as to make it not a fair trial, argues James Phillips"
I have little idea about whether Letby is guilty or not; and she is perhaps the only person who knows for sure. There are questions, but you can always raise questions about such cases, especially if you choose to be economical with the evidence. Or not.
More interesting is the way this case in particular has caught the public's attention, when (say) Beverley Allitt's did not.
Arguably this is down to social media, which wasn't a thing in 1993. I too have no idea if she is guilty or innocent (currently her status as determined at trial is guilty) but the doubt arises because of cases such as that of the Dutch nurse Lucia de Berk.
Reading a bit about Jenrick (better late than never) I am now a huge fan.
Done for speeding twice on arguably the two most irritating stretches of speed-controlled roads on the planet - the M1 variable speed section, presumably where they have those stupid metal barriers up, and, as people will know on PB, my personal bete noir - the Westway in London.
Good for him.
Is this a new ban, or the one from 2023? Same excuse as Andy Burnham - "I didn't notice the sign".
That should also make you a fan of Tom Tugendhat btw, who got himself banned in 2022, and is mentioned in the same article.
That excuse (not seeing the sign) always seems to me to be an aggravation in that the driver is clearly driving without due care and attention, contrary to s3. Did he also fail to notice the mother and pram?
Or the Bridge or Police Car wearing Hi-Viz
(My photo quota. This van looks to be a couple of metres too tall).
There but for the grace of god. In 52 years of driving I have been stopped by the police 3 times. On all 3 times justifiably so, but on all 3 occasions I have been let off at the scene. Twice I was just at fault and should have known better. Once I had complete brain failure.
In the case of brain failure the lights changed and I was the first car turning right at a major junction (3 lanes in each direction) so I just went straight across the 3 lanes of oncoming traffic (why I don't know). I wasn't being a boy racer. I just reacted to the lights changing and went, nice and calmly. On the inside lane of the oncoming traffic was a police car who naturally followed me and stopped me. He shouted at me for about 10 minutes, then probably realised he was dealing with a moron and let me go.
One of the other times I got stopped by a police car was for reading while driving. I was trying to find a house from the estate agents details and was lost and I occasionally glanced down at the details. He asked what would have happened if someone had been crossing the pelican crossing. I thought it wise not to say 'What pelican crossing?'.
The other instance was speeding, which I was because I was late.
The last 2 were deliberate and dangerous and I should have known better. I guess the brain failure is driving without due care and attention, but I am not sure any punishment can stop that happening, although I could easily have caused an accident. We all do daft things without thinking.
That's a very interesting account - thankyou. I have been driving for 40 years, with iirc five 3-point tickets. One part of my wake up was when I moved to London in the late 1990s and received three tickets in a two month period - one for a 36 in a 30 type speeding offence, and two for not stopping when an amber traffic light turned to red as it would be an emergency stop. City police were having a crackdown on red lights. But such reasons are just excuses. In reality my error was driving too fast to try and rush through the lights, either for the daytime one or the 1am one.
I became more radicalised on these questions as I have become more familiar through organisations such as Roadpeace with the number of innocent people who are killed, crippled or hospitalised by people making driving errors that they themselves think of as trivial, and in their belief system as actually not worthy of being a motoring offence, and therefore in some way acceptable.
IMO the answer to your couple of errors is better training / education with things such as graduated licenses and a required repeat driving education / update of some sort perhaps every 10 years at licence renewal time. That would build a gradual improvement of the basic standard.
I think that the totting-up 6 month ban provisions (12 points ie 4x3-point offences in 3 years) are a decent dividing line between "occasional driver mistake" and "driver who is a risk to the public". One thing we need to deal with is those who see a totting-up ban as being "unfortunate" to get rather than "f*ck, I'm a dodgy driver".
And in particular those who create a bubble of delusion to avoid looking in the mirror and seeing themselves as they are. Consider our former Notts PCC Caroline Henry, who committed five speeding offences around the time she got the position. Her main excuse was around "I was late with my child's school paperwork". Then her "exceptional hardship" excuse for wanting to avoid a ban was looking after the same child ... turning her child into a human shield. SInce then she has used a rhetoric of being a victim of bullying because people mention her driving ban.
That needs flipping - so that the child becomes a reason for not committing the offences in the first place, rather than an excuse for getting away with doing the crimes.
I'd make a totting-up ban perhaps 3 years, and basically abolish the Exception Hardship loophole. Then the 10-15k per annum who use the loophole to avoid totting-up bans would start concentrating on being better, safer, less selfish drivers rather than thinking 'how can I avoid responsibility' after the fact.
IMO we'll get something under this Government, but it will probably only be 12 months for a ban, and a modest tightening of Exceptional Hardship rules, rather than a decisive change to the culture.
It's not just David Davis asking questions about this case.
"Letby’s conviction is unsafe, says Boris Johnson’s former science adviser Evidence presented to the jury was so flawed as to make it not a fair trial, argues James Phillips"
I have little idea about whether Letby is guilty or not; and she is perhaps the only person who knows for sure. There are questions, but you can always raise questions about such cases, especially if you choose to be economical with the evidence. Or not.
More interesting is the way this case in particular has caught the public's attention, when (say) Beverley Allitt's did not.
Social media must be a factor here. These days everyone thinks they can be a warrior for truth after fifteen minutes of Googling. Add a splash of conspiracy theory, and the story runs and runs in all sorts of weird directions.
AFAIK not a single PBer is calling for the banning of cash. Many of us don’t use it and think it pointless, inconvenient, environmentally wasteful, risky and time-consuming, but that is rather a different thing.
There are however many weirdo brown-gloved cash-fetishists on here who wish to make draconian restrictions on private businesses and force them to accept an antiquated mode of barter at their own expense, despite they and their customers being happily cashless.
Funny old world.
If you don't have universal, or near-universal, acceptance of cash in the country, then it rapidly becomes pointless as business will not take it. As you well know.
And cash is useful for many people; not for you, perhaps, but others.
Really?
Would you force businesses to accept cash? And, if so, would you apply such a law to online businesses or only those that have bricks & mortar premises?
We can barely get them to accept Scottish banknotes.
Almost no businesses near me in north London accept Scottish money – chiefly because their staff cannot tell a real note from a fake. This has been the case for as long as I can remember.
Just asking.
Why are you wandering around North London trying to make people accept Scottish Banknotes?
It's not just David Davis asking questions about this case.
"Letby’s conviction is unsafe, says Boris Johnson’s former science adviser Evidence presented to the jury was so flawed as to make it not a fair trial, argues James Phillips"
I have little idea about whether Letby is guilty or not; and she is perhaps the only person who knows for sure. There are questions, but you can always raise questions about such cases, especially if you choose to be economical with the evidence. Or not.
More interesting is the way this case in particular has caught the public's attention, when (say) Beverley Allitt's did not.
Arguably this is down to social media, which wasn't a thing in 1993. I too have no idea if she is guilty or innocent (currently her status as determined at trial is guilty) but the doubt arises because of cases such as that of the Dutch nurse Lucia de Berk.
There’s a lot of ‘Americans’ that seem to be taking quite the interest in the case, all of whom are totally convinced of her innocence. It’s likely to be one of the subjects that’s come up on the radar of our friends in Russia and China.
It's not just David Davis asking questions about this case.
"Letby’s conviction is unsafe, says Boris Johnson’s former science adviser Evidence presented to the jury was so flawed as to make it not a fair trial, argues James Phillips"
I have little idea about whether Letby is guilty or not; and she is perhaps the only person who knows for sure. There are questions, but you can always raise questions about such cases, especially if you choose to be economical with the evidence. Or not.
More interesting is the way this case in particular has caught the public's attention, when (say) Beverley Allitt's did not.
Arguably this is down to social media, which wasn't a thing in 1993. I too have no idea if she is guilty or innocent (currently her status as determined at trial is guilty) but the doubt arises because of cases such as that of the Dutch nurse Lucia de Berk.
"Also, all the deaths except the last had been registered as natural. Even that one had initially been thought to be natural by the doctors responsible for the child, but had been reclassified as an unnatural death within a day after other hospital authorities associated it with de Berk and her repeated presence at recent incidents"
Reading a bit about Jenrick (better late than never) I am now a huge fan.
Done for speeding twice on arguably the two most irritating stretches of speed-controlled roads on the planet - the M1 variable speed section, presumably where they have those stupid metal barriers up, and, as people will know on PB, my personal bete noir - the Westway in London.
Good for him.
Is this a new ban, or the one from 2023? Same excuse as Andy Burnham - "I didn't notice the sign".
That should also make you a fan of Tom Tugendhat btw, who got himself banned in 2022, and is mentioned in the same article.
That excuse (not seeing the sign) always seems to me to be an aggravation in that the driver is clearly driving without due care and attention, contrary to s3. Did he also fail to notice the mother and pram?
Or the Bridge or Police Car wearing Hi-Viz
(My photo quota. This van looks to be a couple of metres too tall).
There but for the grace of god. In 52 years of driving I have been stopped by the police 3 times. On all 3 times justifiably so, but on all 3 occasions I have been let off at the scene. Twice I was just at fault and should have known better. Once I had complete brain failure.
In the case of brain failure the lights changed and I was the first car turning right at a major junction (3 lanes in each direction) so I just went straight across the 3 lanes of oncoming traffic (why I don't know). I wasn't being a boy racer. I just reacted to the lights changing and went, nice and calmly. On the inside lane of the oncoming traffic was a police car who naturally followed me and stopped me. He shouted at me for about 10 minutes, then probably realised he was dealing with a moron and let me go.
One of the other times I got stopped by a police car was for reading while driving. I was trying to find a house from the estate agents details and was lost and I occasionally glanced down at the details. He asked what would have happened if someone had been crossing the pelican crossing. I thought it wise not to say 'What pelican crossing?'.
The other instance was speeding, which I was because I was late.
The last 2 were deliberate and dangerous and I should have known better. I guess the brain failure is driving without due care and attention, but I am not sure any punishment can stop that happening, although I could easily have caused an accident. We all do daft things without thinking.
That's a very interesting account - thankyou. I have been driving for 40 years, with iirc five 3-point tickets. One part of my wake up was when I moved to London in the late 1990s and received three tickets in a two month period - one for a 36 in a 30 type speeding offence, and two for not stopping when an amber traffic light turned to red as it would be an emergency stop. City police were having a crackdown on red lights. But such reasons are just excuses. In reality my error was driving too fast to try and rush through the lights, either for the daytime one or the 1am one.
I became more radicalised on these questions as I have become more familiar through organisations such as Roadpeace with the number of innocent people who are killed, crippled or hospitalised by people making driving errors that they themselves think of as trivial, and in their belief system as actually not worthy of being a motoring offence, and therefore in some way acceptable.
IMO the answer to your couple of errors is better training / education with things such as graduated licenses and a repeat driving education / update perhaps every 10 years at licence renewal time.
I think that the totting-up 6 month ban provisions (12 points ie 4x3-point offences in 3 years) are a decent dividing line between "occasional driver mistake" and "driver who is a risk to the public". One thing we need to deal with is those who see a totting-up ban as being "unfortunate" to get rather than "f*ck, I'm a dodgy driver".
And in particular those who create a bubble of delusion to avoid looking in the mirror and seeing themselves as they are. Consider our former Notts PCC Caroline Henry, who committed five speeding offences around the time she got the position. Her main excuse was around "I was late with my child's school paperwork". Then her "exceptional hardship" excuse for wanting to avoid a ban was looking after the same child ... turning her child into a human shield. SInce then she has used a rhetoric of being a victim of bullying because people mention her driving ban.
That needs flipping - so that the child becomes a reason for not committing the offences in the first place, rather than an excuse for getting away with doing the crimes.
I'd make a totting-up ban perhaps 3 years, and basically abolish the Exception Hardship loophole. Then the 10-15k per annum who use the loophole to avoid totting-up bans would start concentrating on being better, safer, less selfish drivers. We'll get something under this Government, but it will only be 12 months and a modest tightening of Exceptional Hardship rules.
Stopped by the police three times in my driving career. Once doing 90 on a three lane dual carriageway at night, with nothing about. Bang to rights, kind of, but my argument about the police not stopping cars doing the same on the nearby M6 didn't wahs. Second time I missed an exit at a roundabout, went round again, plod thought I was taking the piss. Happy with my explanation so off I went. Third time a slow car in the outside lane of an empty dual carriageway was in front. Unmarked car comes up behind me and flashes to get out of the way. I got annoyed and dabbed my brakes. He then pulled me over. No ticket - he tried to bollock me but I blamed him for his aggressive driving. I think he realised he was in the wrong too (we both were) and that the ultimate cause was the idiot in front in the wrong lane - I hadn't wanted to undertake and neither did the plod.
AFAIK not a single PBer is calling for the banning of cash. Many of us don’t use it and think it pointless, inconvenient, environmentally wasteful, risky and time-consuming, but that is rather a different thing.
There are however many weirdo brown-gloved cash-fetishists on here who wish to make draconian restrictions on private businesses and force them to accept an antiquated mode of barter at their own expense, despite they and their customers being happily cashless.
Funny old world.
If you don't have universal, or near-universal, acceptance of cash in the country, then it rapidly becomes pointless as business will not take it. As you well know.
And cash is useful for many people; not for you, perhaps, but others.
Really?
Would you force businesses to accept cash? And, if so, would you apply such a law to online businesses or only those that have bricks & mortar premises?
We can barely get them to accept Scottish banknotes.
Almost no businesses near me in north London accept Scottish money – chiefly because their staff cannot tell a real note from a fake. This has been the case for as long as I can remember.
Just asking.
Why are you wandering around North London trying to make people accept Scottish Banknotes?
Cos he's scared of south London, innit.
Scared is overegging it.
But, of course one prefers to avoid it.
One of the three famed pieces of advice from the aged Earl to his son and heir:
It's not just David Davis asking questions about this case.
"Letby’s conviction is unsafe, says Boris Johnson’s former science adviser Evidence presented to the jury was so flawed as to make it not a fair trial, argues James Phillips"
I have little idea about whether Letby is guilty or not; and she is perhaps the only person who knows for sure. There are questions, but you can always raise questions about such cases, especially if you choose to be economical with the evidence. Or not.
More interesting is the way this case in particular has caught the public's attention, when (say) Beverley Allitt's did not.
Arguably this is down to social media, which wasn't a thing in 1993. I too have no idea if she is guilty or innocent (currently her status as determined at trial is guilty) but the doubt arises because of cases such as that of the Dutch nurse Lucia de Berk.
There’s a lot of ‘Americans’ that seem to be taking quite the interest in the case, all of whom are totally convinced of her innocence. It’s likely to be one of the subjects that’s come up on the radar of our friends in Russia and China.
The angle of the MAGA right is that the reporting restrictions in place in the UK (sic) legal system is proof that the woke/lefties like Starmer are jailing innocents.
We see it with low IQ posters posting things like 'Three years in prison for saying you're not British to coppers' when the reality is that the criminals did say that but they were convicted for serious cases of violence.
Comments
The selfish generation need to understand we will rise up if they don’t live in the real world.
Republicans attacking Haitians 55 days before the election is the dumbest political strategy since nominating a convicted felon. There is a significant Haitian population in Florida, and they are pissed.
https://x.com/cbouzy/status/1833443893213311146
Parents who give grown-up children and their partners large sums of money are increasingly having to use lawyers to claw it back after relationship breakdowns.
Many parents will help their children on the housing ladder through gifts or loans. However, the Bank of Mum and Dad is increasingly hiring lawyers to help them retrieve the sums from their child’s former partner or spouse following a split.
Disputes typically involve sums of over £50,000, lawyers said. However Kate Booth, of law firm Brindley Twist Tafft & James, has been involved in disputes over sums worth as much as £1m.
Once the gift has been made, parents can have a hard time getting their money back.
The Bank of Mum and Dad is behind almost half of first-time home purchases by buyers in their 20s with the average sum given standing at £25,000, according to analysis by the Institute for Fiscal Studies.
High interest rates have also meant that many first-time buyers often cannot afford a property purchase without the income of a partner.
https://www.telegraph.co.uk/money/property/bank-mum-and-dad-calls-lawyers-claw-back-gifts/
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=dLWdtmn9u08
But consider the furore there has been recently, and that Sunak wanted a quadruple lock for pensioners... Will of the people, innit?
Why are you wandering around North London trying to make people accept Scottish Banknotes?
https://www.thesaltpig.co.uk/
The statistical argument that I have seen is that when the *full* rota evidence is examined, more than one nurse is present at all the times of concern; but equally also that this can happen by chance, as it indeed does. The implication is that the data have been pruned, for whatever reason or on what basis is unclear.
Edit: that is so surprising an assertion that it deserves examination, which apparently it did not at the trial.
Pretty much every single housing development built since 1965 is a low-traffic neighbourhood, as you know ! They are where 99% of anti-LTN campaigners live.
This is reason 694 why the "war on cars" conspiraloon lobby are so funny, and in the long term we don't need to worry about them.
Even I wouldn't go so far as a "10mph limit in residential areas". Except as a mandatory requirement for any vehicle make starting with L (rhyming slang for Hell), such as Land Rovers or Lamborghinis. There is perhaps an argument for applying EAPC regulations to such ie power assistance cuts out at 25kph.
(I spent an hour hoovering on the Sunday as the car was already fully charged. The missus was surprised but gratified)
This is the most picturesque cricket ground I umpired a match on, back in my umpiring-the-under13s days.
Every building in shot has gone up in the last couple of years. All the new building is residential.
In at least this one corner of Britain there are no NIMBYs, no construction drought, and a constant volume of high quality supply coming on-stream.
Large amounts of wind on the grid will lead to large fluctuations in the wholesale price of electricity. This creates an arbitrage opportunity for storage, and an opportunity for any industry that can use intermittent supplies of very cheap electricity.
But what I've not seen is a convincing argument that this was done and was important to the trial (and also that there was another set of similarly suspicious/unexplained deaths that would enable pointing to someone else*). If there was then the defence were complete numpties not to do this themselves and present it. I don't rule out that possibility!
*something I don't know - were all deaths in the period assessed and classified as understood/unexplained/suspicious. Where there were suspicious test results, were these tests also carried out on other unexplained deaths?
Area: 0.2 square miles (roughly equal to the Vatican)
Population: 18,000 (about half of Monaco)
Full time jobs: 120,000
Annual visitors: 67 million
GDP: estimates vary widely between an unrealistically low £2bn (equivalent to San Marino) to an optimistic c.40 billion, or 2 Macaus.
(If I've got my sums right, we spend £125bn on state pension. So reducing uplift to 1% in a single year (of low inflation) = £~1.7bn.)
'For fuck's sake, we built the Cairo to Khartoum railway.'
In 27 years, government has spent more than £71bn on winter fuel payments: money that has quite literally gone up in smoke. Insulation and quality housing are the investments this country should make.
https://x.com/stuarthammond14/status/1833492737598816748
I thought about buying a nearby flat. Perhaps I should have - and I wonder what the return would have been over 30 years?
ETA: 27 years
Can you get a few cheap app-controlled timer switches, connected to appliances which can work remotely? Get a handful of power banks that you can set remotely to start charging when the price goes to zero.
https://thehill.com/homenews/campaign/4870702-florida-trump-harris-poll/
Harris has a 3% of lead in North Carolina. Although with 30 EC votes for Florida, if she wins that, the rest is chaff.
https://talkingpointsmemo.com/where-things-stand/desantis-finds-new-dystopian-activity-to-keep-his-election-police-busy
"Letby’s conviction is unsafe, says Boris Johnson’s former science adviser
Evidence presented to the jury was so flawed as to make it not a fair trial, argues James Phillips"
https://www.telegraph.co.uk/news/2024/09/09/lucy-letby-conviction-unsafe-says-boris-johnson-adviser/
The obvious answer is to do both, not just one.
If she loses Florida and Texas narrowly then she could be on track to lose the Electoral College while winning the popular vote by a huge margin.
Have had a flutter.
Has no one explained how much of our power is from smoke-free sources?
When I last looked that could be less than two Sizewell Cs.
First power early 2030's. All tidal lagoons up and running within 15 years. Probably 12 - if Government wants it to happen.
More interesting is the way this case in particular has caught the public's attention, when (say) Beverley Allitt's did not.
I curse the lord for giving me the gift of sight to witness the world around me
https://x.com/USA_Polling/status/1833292077729296548/photo/1
Spending on the winter fuel allowance was the wrong choice. I'm glad Labour will be restricting it.
The margin of error in that FLorida poll is 2%. So it could be a dead heat. Trump hasn't planned on spending his limited resources on defending his home town. Every dollar spent there isn't spent in Pennsylvania. Meanwhile, Harris has huge enthusiasm in the state in terms of GOTV.
I've been saying Florida is a great trading bet.
They’ve also learned from their early mistakes. In the original estate walking from a to b involves an obstacle course of bridges, underground malls, escalators and one way road systems. In the newer developments like Wood Wharf it’s a proper town grid, everything on one level, pavements and zebra crossings.
https://www.washingtonpost.com/wellness/2024/01/11/shoveling-snow-heart-attack/
Instead we did neither.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Lucia_de_Berk_case
I became more radicalised on these questions as I have become more familiar through organisations such as Roadpeace with the number of innocent people who are killed, crippled or hospitalised by people making driving errors that they themselves think of as trivial, and in their belief system as actually not worthy of being a motoring offence, and therefore in some way acceptable.
IMO the answer to your couple of errors is better training / education with things such as graduated licenses and a required repeat driving education / update of some sort perhaps every 10 years at licence renewal time. That would build a gradual improvement of the basic standard.
I think that the totting-up 6 month ban provisions (12 points ie 4x3-point offences in 3 years) are a decent dividing line between "occasional driver mistake" and "driver who is a risk to the public". One thing we need to deal with is those who see a totting-up ban as being "unfortunate" to get rather than "f*ck, I'm a dodgy driver".
And in particular those who create a bubble of delusion to avoid looking in the mirror and seeing themselves as they are. Consider our former Notts PCC Caroline Henry, who committed five speeding offences around the time she got the position. Her main excuse was around "I was late with my child's school paperwork". Then her "exceptional hardship" excuse for wanting to avoid a ban was looking after the same child ... turning her child into a human shield. SInce then she has used a rhetoric of being a victim of bullying because people mention her driving ban.
That needs flipping - so that the child becomes a reason for not committing the offences in the first place, rather than an excuse for getting away with doing the crimes.
I'd make a totting-up ban perhaps 3 years, and basically abolish the Exception Hardship loophole. Then the 10-15k per annum who use the loophole to avoid totting-up bans would start concentrating on being better, safer, less selfish drivers rather than thinking 'how can I avoid responsibility' after the fact.
IMO we'll get something under this Government, but it will probably only be 12 months for a ban, and a modest tightening of Exceptional Hardship rules, rather than a decisive change to the culture.
https://x.com/Gen_Alpha_GOP/status/1833474338139283714
But, of course one prefers to avoid it.
"Also, all the deaths except the last had been registered as natural. Even that one had initially been thought to be natural by the doctors responsible for the child, but had been reclassified as an unnatural death within a day after other hospital authorities associated it with de Berk and her repeated presence at recent incidents"
Wow.
Second time I missed an exit at a roundabout, went round again, plod thought I was taking the piss. Happy with my explanation so off I went.
Third time a slow car in the outside lane of an empty dual carriageway was in front. Unmarked car comes up behind me and flashes to get out of the way. I got annoyed and dabbed my brakes. He then pulled me over. No ticket - he tried to bollock me but I blamed him for his aggressive driving. I think he realised he was in the wrong too (we both were) and that the ultimate cause was the idiot in front in the wrong lane - I hadn't wanted to undertake and neither did the plod.
'Never go South of the River'.
We see it with low IQ posters posting things like 'Three years in prison for saying you're not British to coppers' when the reality is that the criminals did say that but they were convicted for serious cases of violence.