Incidentally i was in paros a few weeks ago and can concur with much of what leon said about the city especially the north side which can feel quite third world in places. Some metro trains i seemed to be the only white person on. A big decline since my last visit.
Not a bad opening gambit but does it always have to be Saturday morning? It gets a bit predictable and it's much more fun if there's a bit of detective work involved.
Aside from the office politics, the revelation that AI can now produce extremely plausible podcasts - human conversations - from random chunks of text (and getting better the more text provided) is absolutely profound
That snippet was good enough to fool most on here despite the obvious and immediate doubts (why would a real US podcast comment on a UK PB thread still ongoing? And so quick?). Makes no sense
But it spells the death knell for a lot of radio, and indeed podcasts
I suspect "most on here", like me, didn't listen to it.
Old fckr confession, I’ve never downloaded/listened to a podcast in my puff. I realise I may be missing a lot of good stuff but the self-congratulatory tone of much of the proponents puts me off. The thought of listening to Amol Rajan and Nick Robinson snickering at how clever they are makes me feel a bit pukey.
Plenty of podcasts aren’t about famous people or self-congratulation. They’re just people talking about interesting subjects. I like Lingthusiasm, for example, which is a podcast about linguistics.
Has anyone noticed the amount of russian propoganda now filling tiktok. One video has Putin saying welcome to russia then an array of scenes showing russias best bits.
Pornography? Does it come with a free microscope to see Putin's bit?
No its worrying because it seems every fifth video on my feed is russian propoganda. Are any of you guys on tiktok.
I'm surprised.
I would have expected the ratio to be liker 50%.
I think it's a typo for every filth video., I have some good Thai material if he wants a change.
On thread - Jenrick's reached 63% now? I think he's reasonably the favourite under current circumstances but 63% seems too high to me. A lot still to happen between now and then.
The Conference will be critical as how each of the candidates performs and more important how the membership receives the torrent of verbage spewed forth by the four.
The MPs ballot after Conference to reduce four to two - let's say Jenrick bombs and Badenoch shines, what then?
Counter intuitively, I wonder if some MPs will look at the activist reaction and think beyond the election. Watching hundreds of activists baying for blood may be good for the Party leadership election but winning real elections less so. It may be the candidate who gets the endorsement of the Mail or the Express may not be so well received in the relative privacy of the 1922 Committee meeting room and the ballot box.
Jenrick is betting the house, now, on immigration being an issue 4-5 years down the line.
Well, he's not likely to be wrong is he? SKS is going to do √fuck all about it except increase it - should such a thing be possible.
Immigration numbers are falling dramatically and will not rise back to the Tory levels. The huge numbers that came over the past gour years were the result of short term factors. Jenrick will only remind the voters of the policy failure of the Tories.
It won't stop it being an issue, after all it was an issue in the Eighties even when we had net emigration in some years. The objection is not simply to the flows, it is to the cultural and societal changes from previous immigration, even in places where there are very few immigrants such as Clacton.
At some point we will have our own politicians echoing Trump in wanting legal immigrants deported.
There’s probably a multiple regression analysis you could do between the political salience of immigration and other variables.
My sense is that the primary factors are the visibility of (particularly “irregular”) migration, the absolute statistical rate of change, the amount politicians and media talk about it, and the overall performance of public services and living standards.
A combination of very negative vibes about the economy and public realm with a highly visible phenomenon of small boats and over-filled hotels and reception centres currently us quite a toxic recipe.
How the economy is doing is very important. If people feel poorer then suddenly a mass of brown people around claiming benefits become a salient issue. The times when immigration faded as a concern was boom years like the 90s.
Yebbut salience is about perception not the actualité. I believe the scenes of the AfD breakthrough, Thuringia and Saxony, have some of the lowest immigration rates in Germany? Still, as long as we have folk on the internet making the connection between brown people and benefits, who cares about reality.
The theory that infrastructure costs are prone to bloating when they are paid for centrally is supported by the example of the one kind of infrastructure that has remained relatively cheap, namely roads. Despite some big failures like the Lower Thames Crossing, Britain ranks mid-table overall, a better performance than for any other infrastructure type. The reason for this is that roads directly benefit a much wider constituency than any given railway project: pretty much anyone in the nearby area rather than just the people within about one kilometre of a given station. What’s more, 94 percent of miles travelled in the UK are on roads (80 percent in private cars, and 14 percent on buses and coaches), so many more people see themselves as having a stake in the issue. The tendency for local obstructionism is thus weaker, and even national government tends not to end up with spiralling costs. For the bulk of the projects, funded (or part-funded) and delivered by local councils themselves, the effect is even stronger.
The UK does well when building roads and crap when building railways.
UK governments (and many PBers) are obsessed with building railways.
There's an argument that what we should be paying more attention to is indeed the things we're screwing up rather than the things we're doing OK at -- more scope to improve...
There's also the argument that you invest in success rather than reinforcing failure.
Paying more attention to things you're screwing up should often lead to the decision to stop doing them entirely.
Having travelled around europe extensively this summer there seems to be a malaise across the entire western world though it varies by country. The country i was most impressed with relatively speaking was poland.
Having travelled around europe extensively this summer there seems to be a malaise across the entire western world though it varies by country. The country i was most impressed with relatively speaking was poland.
Poland's military is designed to impress Russian spies.
One of the things that would make @leon rise even higher in my estimation would be if it transpired he was a Russian sleeper bot that had been playing the long game for years.
The occasional puff posts for a certain Spectator writer have all just been misdirection.
Jenrick is betting the house, now, on immigration being an issue 4-5 years down the line.
Well, he's not likely to be wrong is he? SKS is going to do √fuck all about it except increase it - should such a thing be possible.
Immigration numbers are falling dramatically and will not rise back to the Tory levels. The huge numbers that came over the past gour years were the result of short term factors. Jenrick will only remind the voters of the policy failure of the Tories.
It won't stop it being an issue, after all it was an issue in the Eighties even when we had net emigration in some years. The objection is not simply to the flows, it is to the cultural and societal changes from previous immigration, even in places where there are very few immigrants such as Clacton.
At some point we will have our own politicians echoing Trump in wanting legal immigrants deported.
There’s probably a multiple regression analysis you could do between the political salience of immigration and other variables.
My sense is that the primary factors are the visibility of (particularly “irregular”) migration, the absolute statistical rate of change, the amount politicians and media talk about it, and the overall performance of public services and living standards.
A combination of very negative vibes about the economy and public realm with a highly visible phenomenon of small boats and over-filled hotels and reception centres currently us quite a toxic recipe.
How the economy is doing is very important. If people feel poorer then suddenly a mass of brown people around claiming benefits become a salient issue. The times when immigration faded as a concern was boom years like the 90s.
Yebbut salience is about perception not the actualité. I believe the scenes of the AfD breakthrough, Thuringia and Saxony, have some of the lowest immigration rates in Germany? Still, as long as we have folk on the internet making the connection between brown people and benefits, who cares about reality.
Afd are breaking through in relatively poor east germany which come back to my point about economics.
The theory that infrastructure costs are prone to bloating when they are paid for centrally is supported by the example of the one kind of infrastructure that has remained relatively cheap, namely roads. Despite some big failures like the Lower Thames Crossing, Britain ranks mid-table overall, a better performance than for any other infrastructure type. The reason for this is that roads directly benefit a much wider constituency than any given railway project: pretty much anyone in the nearby area rather than just the people within about one kilometre of a given station. What’s more, 94 percent of miles travelled in the UK are on roads (80 percent in private cars, and 14 percent on buses and coaches), so many more people see themselves as having a stake in the issue. The tendency for local obstructionism is thus weaker, and even national government tends not to end up with spiralling costs. For the bulk of the projects, funded (or part-funded) and delivered by local councils themselves, the effect is even stronger.
The UK does well when building roads and crap when building railways.
UK governments (and many PBers) are obsessed with building railways.
There's an argument that what we should be paying more attention to is indeed the things we're screwing up rather than the things we're doing OK at -- more scope to improve...
The answer in the Foundations 'Why Britain has stagnated' relates to : planning barriers, infrastructure, investment, housing, over centralisation, energy prices, gold plated processes, importing cheap labour to fix things and other stuff.
But we are nice and respect the rule law, like free speech and are slightly bonkers.
All well put, with a nice map showing I live in a place that doesn't really register on any meaningful scale (which is why we are all so happy here).
One of the things that would make @leon rise even higher in my estimation would be if it transpired he was a Russian sleeper bot that had been playing the long game for years.
The occasional puff posts for a certain Spectator writer have all just been misdirection.
Well even mild opposition to the lgbt agenda has become a "russian talking point" to some on here
One of the things that would make @leon rise even higher in my estimation would be if it transpired he was a Russian sleeper bot that had been playing the long game for years.
The occasional puff posts for a certain Spectator writer have all just been misdirection.
Pah, the true sleeper will have been way more subtle, flooding the place with a large number of posts which are outwardly reasonable but lacking in any genuine character, portraying themselves as almost neutral one might say, biding the time to unleash the reveal of the true glory of Putin's Russia in one shocking moment.
Incidentally i was in paros a few weeks ago and can concur with much of what leon said about the city especially the north side which can feel quite third world in places. Some metro trains i seemed to be the only white person on. A big decline since my last visit.
Good morning
A plane crashes on the Ukraine/Republic of China border. Which side do you bury the survivors?
The theory that infrastructure costs are prone to bloating when they are paid for centrally is supported by the example of the one kind of infrastructure that has remained relatively cheap, namely roads. Despite some big failures like the Lower Thames Crossing, Britain ranks mid-table overall, a better performance than for any other infrastructure type. The reason for this is that roads directly benefit a much wider constituency than any given railway project: pretty much anyone in the nearby area rather than just the people within about one kilometre of a given station. What’s more, 94 percent of miles travelled in the UK are on roads (80 percent in private cars, and 14 percent on buses and coaches), so many more people see themselves as having a stake in the issue. The tendency for local obstructionism is thus weaker, and even national government tends not to end up with spiralling costs. For the bulk of the projects, funded (or part-funded) and delivered by local councils themselves, the effect is even stronger.
The UK does well when building roads and crap when building railways.
UK governments (and many PBers) are obsessed with building railways.
There's an argument that what we should be paying more attention to is indeed the things we're screwing up rather than the things we're doing OK at -- more scope to improve...
The answer in the Foundations 'Why Britain has stagnated' relates to : planning barriers, infrastructure, investment, housing, over centralisation, energy prices, gold plated processes, importing cheap labour to fix things and other stuff.
But we are nice and respect the rule law, like free speech and are slightly bonkers.
All well put, with a nice map showing I live in a place that doesn't really register on any meaningful scale (which is why we are all so happy here).
Certainly counties like poland have caught up with us fast. If the north of england was a country it would be the 2nd poorest in the oecd.
Has anyone noticed the amount of russian propoganda now filling tiktok. One video has Putin saying welcome to russia then an array of scenes showing russias best bits.
Pornography? Does it come with a free microscope to see Putin's bit?
No its worrying because it seems every fifth video on my feed is russian propoganda. Are any of you guys on tiktok.
It's a problem. I see less on Twix, but on there the major problem's porn.
As I've said before, there's a problem in gaming and kids, where in-game channels are filled with Russian propaganda. A (primary-aged) kid started spouting pro-Russian b/s to my son in school, and when asked where he got it from, he answered he was told it in the chat of a certain game. He's heard similar from other kids.
Having travelled around europe extensively this summer there seems to be a malaise across the entire western world though it varies by country. The country i was most impressed with relatively speaking was poland.
Poland's military is designed to impress Russian spies.
Captain Darling: So you see, Blackadder, Field Marshall Haig is most anxious to eliminate all these German spies.
General Melchett: Filthy hun weasels, fighting their dirty underhand war!
Captain Darling: And fortunately, one of our spies...
General Melchett: Splendid fellows, brave heroes risking life and limb for Blighty!
Aside from the office politics, the revelation that AI can now produce extremely plausible podcasts - human conversations - from random chunks of text (and getting better the more text provided) is absolutely profound
That snippet was good enough to fool most on here despite the obvious and immediate doubts (why would a real US podcast comment on a UK PB thread still ongoing? And so quick?). Makes no sense
But it spells the death knell for a lot of radio, and indeed podcasts
I suspect "most on here", like me, didn't listen to it.
Old fckr confession, I’ve never downloaded/listened to a podcast in my puff. I realise I may be missing a lot of good stuff but the self-congratulatory tone of much of the proponents puts me off. The thought of listening to Amol Rajan and Nick Robinson snickering at how clever they are makes me feel a bit pukey.
I think politics and current affairs podcasts run a much higher risk of just being smugfests, than say some rando rambling with great enthusiasm about some niche interest of theirs. It feels much more socially performative.
On topic. Forgive me for not understanding the appeal of Robert Jenrick.
Lay the favourite?
To me he seems mostly bland, but he seems to stir some very strong opinions in people.
I wont be surprised if what happens is: it is Jenrick vs one of the 'centrists' put to the membership who are then abs furious that they haven't been given Badernoch to vote for, but reluctantly have to vote Jenrick.
Jenrick is dire and tanks in the polling and is ousted within two or three years and Badernoch or perhaps Johnson is the LOTO when GE 2028/9 comes around.
Has anyone noticed the amount of russian propoganda now filling tiktok. One video has Putin saying welcome to russia then an array of scenes showing russias best bits.
Pornography? Does it come with a free microscope to see Putin's bit?
No its worrying because it seems every fifth video on my feed is russian propoganda. Are any of you guys on tiktok.
It's a problem. I see less on Twix, but on there the major problem's porn.
As I've said before, there's a problem in gaming and kids, where in-game channels are filled with Russian propaganda. A (primary-aged) kid started spouting pro-Russian b/s to my son in school, and when asked where he got it from, he answered he was told it in the chat of a certain game. He's heard similar from other kids.
Yes on tiktok they are trying to create a cult of personality round Putin. But this is between other videos with people saying how sh.t the uk is.
Jenrick is betting the house, now, on immigration being an issue 4-5 years down the line.
Well, he's not likely to be wrong is he? SKS is going to do √fuck all about it except increase it - should such a thing be possible.
Immigration numbers are falling dramatically and will not rise back to the Tory levels. The huge numbers that came over the past gour years were the result of short term factors. Jenrick will only remind the voters of the policy failure of the Tories.
It won't stop it being an issue, after all it was an issue in the Eighties even when we had net emigration in some years. The objection is not simply to the flows, it is to the cultural and societal changes from previous immigration, even in places where there are very few immigrants such as Clacton.
At some point we will have our own politicians echoing Trump in wanting legal immigrants deported.
There’s probably a multiple regression analysis you could do between the political salience of immigration and other variables.
My sense is that the primary factors are the visibility of (particularly “irregular”) migration, the absolute statistical rate of change, the amount politicians and media talk about it, and the overall performance of public services and living standards.
A combination of very negative vibes about the economy and public realm with a highly visible phenomenon of small boats and over-filled hotels and reception centres currently us quite a toxic recipe.
How the economy is doing is very important. If people feel poorer then suddenly a mass of brown people around claiming benefits become a salient issue. The times when immigration faded as a concern was boom years like the 90s.
Yebbut salience is about perception not the actualité. I believe the scenes of the AfD breakthrough, Thuringia and Saxony, have some of the lowest immigration rates in Germany? Still, as long as we have folk on the internet making the connection between brown people and benefits, who cares about reality.
I read somewhere that what really drives anti-immigration parties is when you go from basically zero immigrants in an area to some visible proportion like 5%. That freaks out people who aren't used to immigrants much more than a city with 20% going to 25% or 30%.
Aside from the office politics, the revelation that AI can now produce extremely plausible podcasts - human conversations - from random chunks of text (and getting better the more text provided) is absolutely profound
That snippet was good enough to fool most on here despite the obvious and immediate doubts (why would a real US podcast comment on a UK PB thread still ongoing? And so quick?). Makes no sense
But it spells the death knell for a lot of radio, and indeed podcasts
I suspect "most on here", like me, didn't listen to it.
Old fckr confession, I’ve never downloaded/listened to a podcast in my puff. I realise I may be missing a lot of good stuff but the self-congratulatory tone of much of the proponents puts me off. The thought of listening to Amol Rajan and Nick Robinson snickering at how clever they are makes me feel a bit pukey.
I listened to the first ten minutes or so of their US election podcast, and it was crap. To the extent that they interviewed Justin Webb, as an expert.
The theory that infrastructure costs are prone to bloating when they are paid for centrally is supported by the example of the one kind of infrastructure that has remained relatively cheap, namely roads. Despite some big failures like the Lower Thames Crossing, Britain ranks mid-table overall, a better performance than for any other infrastructure type. The reason for this is that roads directly benefit a much wider constituency than any given railway project: pretty much anyone in the nearby area rather than just the people within about one kilometre of a given station. What’s more, 94 percent of miles travelled in the UK are on roads (80 percent in private cars, and 14 percent on buses and coaches), so many more people see themselves as having a stake in the issue. The tendency for local obstructionism is thus weaker, and even national government tends not to end up with spiralling costs. For the bulk of the projects, funded (or part-funded) and delivered by local councils themselves, the effect is even stronger.
The UK does well when building roads and crap when building railways.
UK governments (and many PBers) are obsessed with building railways.
There's an argument that what we should be paying more attention to is indeed the things we're screwing up rather than the things we're doing OK at -- more scope to improve...
The answer in the Foundations 'Why Britain has stagnated' relates to : planning barriers, infrastructure, investment, housing, over centralisation, energy prices, gold plated processes, importing cheap labour to fix things and other stuff.
But we are nice and respect the rule law, like free speech and are slightly bonkers.
All well put, with a nice map showing I live in a place that doesn't really register on any meaningful scale (which is why we are all so happy here).
Certainly counties like poland have caught up with us fast. If the north of england was a country it would be the 2nd poorest in the oecd.
On thread - Jenrick's reached 63% now? I think he's reasonably the favourite under current circumstances but 63% seems too high to me. A lot still to happen between now and then.
The Conference will be critical as how each of the candidates performs and more important how the membership receives the torrent of verbage spewed forth by the four.
The MPs ballot after Conference to reduce four to two - let's say Jenrick bombs and Badenoch shines, what then?
Counter intuitively, I wonder if some MPs will look at the activist reaction and think beyond the election. Watching hundreds of activists baying for blood may be good for the Party leadership election but winning real elections less so. It may be the candidate who gets the endorsement of the Mail or the Express may not be so well received in the relative privacy of the 1922 Committee meeting room and the ballot box.
I really like this idea of having the number winnowed down after Conference. I don't know if it will work in the sense of arriving at the best choice, but for all some of the moaning about how long the process is taking (as though there is some kind of rush) having MPs taking a sense of the mood of activists in a wider setting (even if possibly to do the opposite) strikes me as an interesting experiement.
Just like expenses, it appears that once you become an MP, your moral compass gets switched off, and the pursuit of money over and above your earned wage becomes paramount. Political donations are perfectly legitimate as long as they are declared, above board and used for campaigning/running the office and suchlike. Where it starts to stink is the sheer amount of freebies MPs seem to attract, no matter what party they represent. If the PM needs a clothing allowance for them and a partner, then fair enough, make it part of the package and showcase the best of British, but can a cabinet minister really not afford to buy their own clothes? Now the other freebies are bit more stinky and complicated. No such thing as a free lunch and all that. Footie tickets and Swifty tickets? Get to fuck, they should be buying their own. Things like Charity Ball tickets are maybe more acceptable, but it's complicated. Ed Davey taking cash to care for his kid? A tough one, but on balance, I don't like it. Farage off to the States to support an injured mate? Unacceptable. It's gone on for years, but it needs to be stricter and all the freebies stopped. Free Gear Keir and Vicky Sponge have done us all a favour by really highlighting it.
THh thing is, MPs and cabinet ministers are wildy underpaid compared to their peers in any other walk of life. All this caterwauling is just going to make it an even more unattractive profession for talented people to consider.
But they are not underpaid copmpared to the majority of the UK population - and they are supposd to be wanting the job out of a sense of public duty and service not to line their own pockets.
Now that is a poor argument when talking about nurses and teachers who are on fuck all but not when you are talking about the Prime Minister who is already on a few quid short of £167,000 a year.
This is another failing of our adoption of this idea of professional politicians - politics as a career rather than as service.
pay peanuts, get monkeys, complain about the stink. so it goes
Except under no one's definition would £167K a year be described as peanuts. And as I said, politics is supposed to be about public service, not self enrichment.
I believe Boris Johnson's phrase was "chickenfeed", not "peanuts", and that was £250k per annum not £167k.
And that was in 2009, so worth just under £400k now.
I went and looked at where the UK stands alongside the rest of the G7 on this. The USA, Canada, Germany and Japan pay their head of Government more whilst France and Italy pay less. That is including any additional payment for being an MP where applicable.
I don't think that is a particularly bad place to be.
The theory that infrastructure costs are prone to bloating when they are paid for centrally is supported by the example of the one kind of infrastructure that has remained relatively cheap, namely roads. Despite some big failures like the Lower Thames Crossing, Britain ranks mid-table overall, a better performance than for any other infrastructure type. The reason for this is that roads directly benefit a much wider constituency than any given railway project: pretty much anyone in the nearby area rather than just the people within about one kilometre of a given station. What’s more, 94 percent of miles travelled in the UK are on roads (80 percent in private cars, and 14 percent on buses and coaches), so many more people see themselves as having a stake in the issue. The tendency for local obstructionism is thus weaker, and even national government tends not to end up with spiralling costs. For the bulk of the projects, funded (or part-funded) and delivered by local councils themselves, the effect is even stronger.
The UK does well when building roads and crap when building railways.
UK governments (and many PBers) are obsessed with building railways.
There's an argument that what we should be paying more attention to is indeed the things we're screwing up rather than the things we're doing OK at -- more scope to improve...
The answer in the Foundations 'Why Britain has stagnated' relates to : planning barriers, infrastructure, investment, housing, over centralisation, energy prices, gold plated processes, importing cheap labour to fix things and other stuff.
But we are nice and respect the rule law, like free speech and are slightly bonkers.
All well put, with a nice map showing I live in a place that doesn't really register on any meaningful scale (which is why we are all so happy here).
Certainly counties like poland have caught up with us fast. If the north of england was a country it would be the 2nd poorest in the oecd.
The theory that infrastructure costs are prone to bloating when they are paid for centrally is supported by the example of the one kind of infrastructure that has remained relatively cheap, namely roads. Despite some big failures like the Lower Thames Crossing, Britain ranks mid-table overall, a better performance than for any other infrastructure type. The reason for this is that roads directly benefit a much wider constituency than any given railway project: pretty much anyone in the nearby area rather than just the people within about one kilometre of a given station. What’s more, 94 percent of miles travelled in the UK are on roads (80 percent in private cars, and 14 percent on buses and coaches), so many more people see themselves as having a stake in the issue. The tendency for local obstructionism is thus weaker, and even national government tends not to end up with spiralling costs. For the bulk of the projects, funded (or part-funded) and delivered by local councils themselves, the effect is even stronger.
The UK does well when building roads and crap when building railways.
UK governments (and many PBers) are obsessed with building railways.
There's an argument that what we should be paying more attention to is indeed the things we're screwing up rather than the things we're doing OK at -- more scope to improve...
The answer in the Foundations 'Why Britain has stagnated' relates to : planning barriers, infrastructure, investment, housing, over centralisation, energy prices, gold plated processes, importing cheap labour to fix things and other stuff.
But we are nice and respect the rule law, like free speech and are slightly bonkers.
All well put, with a nice map showing I live in a place that doesn't really register on any meaningful scale (which is why we are all so happy here).
Certainly counties like poland have caught up with us fast. If the north of england was a country it would be the 2nd poorest in the oecd.
Poland is a county?
When did this happen?
Many times
• Duchy of Poland c. 960 • Baptism of Poland 14 April 966 • Kingdom of Poland 18 April 1025 • Polish–Lithuanian Commonwealth 1 July 1569 • Partitions of Poland 24 October 1795 • Second Republic 11 November 1918 • Government-in-exile 17 September 1939 • People's Republic 22 July 1944 • Third Republic 31 December 1989
Does Poland hold the record for being refounded the most times?
Incidentally i was in paros a few weeks ago and can concur with much of what leon said about the city especially the north side which can feel quite third world in places. Some metro trains i seemed to be the only white person on. A big decline since my last visit.
Good morning
A plane crashes on the Ukraine/Republic of China border. Which side do you bury the survivors?
One of the things that would make @leon rise even higher in my estimation would be if it transpired he was a Russian sleeper bot that had been playing the long game for years.
The occasional puff posts for a certain Spectator writer have all just been misdirection.
Well even mild opposition to the lgbt agenda has become a "russian talking point" to some on here
Interesting stuff. Do you have any views on the Covid vaccine perchance?
The theory that infrastructure costs are prone to bloating when they are paid for centrally is supported by the example of the one kind of infrastructure that has remained relatively cheap, namely roads. Despite some big failures like the Lower Thames Crossing, Britain ranks mid-table overall, a better performance than for any other infrastructure type. The reason for this is that roads directly benefit a much wider constituency than any given railway project: pretty much anyone in the nearby area rather than just the people within about one kilometre of a given station. What’s more, 94 percent of miles travelled in the UK are on roads (80 percent in private cars, and 14 percent on buses and coaches), so many more people see themselves as having a stake in the issue. The tendency for local obstructionism is thus weaker, and even national government tends not to end up with spiralling costs. For the bulk of the projects, funded (or part-funded) and delivered by local councils themselves, the effect is even stronger.
The UK does well when building roads and crap when building railways.
UK governments (and many PBers) are obsessed with building railways.
There's an argument that what we should be paying more attention to is indeed the things we're screwing up rather than the things we're doing OK at -- more scope to improve...
The answer in the Foundations 'Why Britain has stagnated' relates to : planning barriers, infrastructure, investment, housing, over centralisation, energy prices, gold plated processes, importing cheap labour to fix things and other stuff.
But we are nice and respect the rule law, like free speech and are slightly bonkers.
All well put, with a nice map showing I live in a place that doesn't really register on any meaningful scale (which is why we are all so happy here).
Certainly counties like poland have caught up with us fast. If the north of england was a country it would be the 2nd poorest in the oecd.
Poland is a county?
When did this happen?
Many times
• Duchy of Poland c. 960 • Baptism of Poland 14 April 966 • Kingdom of Poland 18 April 1025 • Polish–Lithuanian Commonwealth 1 July 1569 • Partitions of Poland 24 October 1795 • Second Republic 11 November 1918 • Government-in-exile 17 September 1939 • People's Republic 22 July 1944 • Third Republic 31 December 1989
Does Poland hold the record for being refounded the most times?
It's easy to forget an awful lot of countries are quite 'new', especially in their modern forms.
I've just done an eight-mile run around St Neots, on roads I've never run before, and that piccie makes me feel so incredibly jealous. I miss the mountains.
The theory that infrastructure costs are prone to bloating when they are paid for centrally is supported by the example of the one kind of infrastructure that has remained relatively cheap, namely roads. Despite some big failures like the Lower Thames Crossing, Britain ranks mid-table overall, a better performance than for any other infrastructure type. The reason for this is that roads directly benefit a much wider constituency than any given railway project: pretty much anyone in the nearby area rather than just the people within about one kilometre of a given station. What’s more, 94 percent of miles travelled in the UK are on roads (80 percent in private cars, and 14 percent on buses and coaches), so many more people see themselves as having a stake in the issue. The tendency for local obstructionism is thus weaker, and even national government tends not to end up with spiralling costs. For the bulk of the projects, funded (or part-funded) and delivered by local councils themselves, the effect is even stronger.
The UK does well when building roads and crap when building railways.
UK governments (and many PBers) are obsessed with building railways.
There's an argument that what we should be paying more attention to is indeed the things we're screwing up rather than the things we're doing OK at -- more scope to improve...
The answer in the Foundations 'Why Britain has stagnated' relates to : planning barriers, infrastructure, investment, housing, over centralisation, energy prices, gold plated processes, importing cheap labour to fix things and other stuff.
But we are nice and respect the rule law, like free speech and are slightly bonkers.
All well put, with a nice map showing I live in a place that doesn't really register on any meaningful scale (which is why we are all so happy here).
Certainly counties like poland have caught up with us fast. If the north of england was a country it would be the 2nd poorest in the oecd.
Poland is a county?
When did this happen?
Many times
• Duchy of Poland c. 960 • Baptism of Poland 14 April 966 • Kingdom of Poland 18 April 1025 • Polish–Lithuanian Commonwealth 1 July 1569 • Partitions of Poland 24 October 1795 • Second Republic 11 November 1918 • Government-in-exile 17 September 1939 • People's Republic 22 July 1944 • Third Republic 31 December 1989
Does Poland hold the record for being refounded the most times?
The theory that infrastructure costs are prone to bloating when they are paid for centrally is supported by the example of the one kind of infrastructure that has remained relatively cheap, namely roads. Despite some big failures like the Lower Thames Crossing, Britain ranks mid-table overall, a better performance than for any other infrastructure type. The reason for this is that roads directly benefit a much wider constituency than any given railway project: pretty much anyone in the nearby area rather than just the people within about one kilometre of a given station. What’s more, 94 percent of miles travelled in the UK are on roads (80 percent in private cars, and 14 percent on buses and coaches), so many more people see themselves as having a stake in the issue. The tendency for local obstructionism is thus weaker, and even national government tends not to end up with spiralling costs. For the bulk of the projects, funded (or part-funded) and delivered by local councils themselves, the effect is even stronger.
The UK does well when building roads and crap when building railways.
UK governments (and many PBers) are obsessed with building railways.
There's an argument that what we should be paying more attention to is indeed the things we're screwing up rather than the things we're doing OK at -- more scope to improve...
The answer in the Foundations 'Why Britain has stagnated' relates to : planning barriers, infrastructure, investment, housing, over centralisation, energy prices, gold plated processes, importing cheap labour to fix things and other stuff.
But we are nice and respect the rule law, like free speech and are slightly bonkers.
All well put, with a nice map showing I live in a place that doesn't really register on any meaningful scale (which is why we are all so happy here).
Certainly counties like poland have caught up with us fast. If the north of england was a country it would be the 2nd poorest in the oecd.
Poland is a county?
When did this happen?
Wouldn't have been allowed in the good old days.
Give it a few years and it’ll be playing regularly in the county championship.
On thread - Jenrick's reached 63% now? I think he's reasonably the favourite under current circumstances but 63% seems too high to me. A lot still to happen between now and then.
The Conference will be critical as how each of the candidates performs and more important how the membership receives the torrent of verbage spewed forth by the four.
The MPs ballot after Conference to reduce four to two - let's say Jenrick bombs and Badenoch shines, what then?
Counter intuitively, I wonder if some MPs will look at the activist reaction and think beyond the election. Watching hundreds of activists baying for blood may be good for the Party leadership election but winning real elections less so. It may be the candidate who gets the endorsement of the Mail or the Express may not be so well received in the relative privacy of the 1922 Committee meeting room and the ballot box.
I really like this idea of having the number winnowed down after Conference. I don't know if it will work in the sense of arriving at the best choice, but for all some of the moaning about how long the process is taking (as though there is some kind of rush) having MPs taking a sense of the mood of activists in a wider setting (even if possibly to do the opposite) strikes me as an interesting experiement.
As @HYUFD has mentioned, there are also a series of hustings going on round the country - not sure when the one for Newham is going to be? With that and the Conference you are right in saying the candidates will have had plenty of exposure to Party members and activists before any vote.
The theory that infrastructure costs are prone to bloating when they are paid for centrally is supported by the example of the one kind of infrastructure that has remained relatively cheap, namely roads. Despite some big failures like the Lower Thames Crossing, Britain ranks mid-table overall, a better performance than for any other infrastructure type. The reason for this is that roads directly benefit a much wider constituency than any given railway project: pretty much anyone in the nearby area rather than just the people within about one kilometre of a given station. What’s more, 94 percent of miles travelled in the UK are on roads (80 percent in private cars, and 14 percent on buses and coaches), so many more people see themselves as having a stake in the issue. The tendency for local obstructionism is thus weaker, and even national government tends not to end up with spiralling costs. For the bulk of the projects, funded (or part-funded) and delivered by local councils themselves, the effect is even stronger.
The UK does well when building roads and crap when building railways.
UK governments (and many PBers) are obsessed with building railways.
There's an argument that what we should be paying more attention to is indeed the things we're screwing up rather than the things we're doing OK at -- more scope to improve...
The answer in the Foundations 'Why Britain has stagnated' relates to : planning barriers, infrastructure, investment, housing, over centralisation, energy prices, gold plated processes, importing cheap labour to fix things and other stuff.
But we are nice and respect the rule law, like free speech and are slightly bonkers.
All well put, with a nice map showing I live in a place that doesn't really register on any meaningful scale (which is why we are all so happy here).
Certainly counties like poland have caught up with us fast. If the north of england was a country it would be the 2nd poorest in the oecd.
Poland is a county?
When did this happen?
Wouldn't have been allowed in the good old days.
Give it a few years and it’ll be playing regularly in the county championship.
Has anyone noticed the amount of russian propoganda now filling tiktok. One video has Putin saying welcome to russia then an array of scenes showing russias best bits.
Pornography? Does it come with a free microscope to see Putin's bit?
No its worrying because it seems every fifth video on my feed is russian propoganda. Are any of you guys on tiktok.
It's a problem. I see less on Twix, but on there the major problem's porn.
As I've said before, there's a problem in gaming and kids, where in-game channels are filled with Russian propaganda. A (primary-aged) kid started spouting pro-Russian b/s to my son in school, and when asked where he got it from, he answered he was told it in the chat of a certain game. He's heard similar from other kids.
I watched the live stream on YouTube of CITY OF TROY's racecourse gallop at Southwell yesterday and even in that chat there was all sorts of political nonsense especially, it has to be said, from the pro-Trump keyboard warriors.
On thread - Jenrick's reached 63% now? I think he's reasonably the favourite under current circumstances but 63% seems too high to me. A lot still to happen between now and then.
The Conference will be critical as how each of the candidates performs and more important how the membership receives the torrent of verbage spewed forth by the four.
The MPs ballot after Conference to reduce four to two - let's say Jenrick bombs and Badenoch shines, what then?
Counter intuitively, I wonder if some MPs will look at the activist reaction and think beyond the election. Watching hundreds of activists baying for blood may be good for the Party leadership election but winning real elections less so. It may be the candidate who gets the endorsement of the Mail or the Express may not be so well received in the relative privacy of the 1922 Committee meeting room and the ballot box.
I really like this idea of having the number winnowed down after Conference. I don't know if it will work in the sense of arriving at the best choice, but for all some of the moaning about how long the process is taking (as though there is some kind of rush) having MPs taking a sense of the mood of activists in a wider setting (even if possibly to do the opposite) strikes me as an interesting experiement.
As @HYUFD has mentioned, there are also a series of hustings going on round the country - not sure when the one for Newham is going to be? With that and the Conference you are right in saying the candidates will have had plenty of exposure to Party members and activists before any vote.
There has to be a risk that given the general nature of the average political party member such exposure might persuade them to exit the race and quit politics altogether!
Just kidding of course, most MPs are themselves political wonks, so should enjoy it.
The theory that infrastructure costs are prone to bloating when they are paid for centrally is supported by the example of the one kind of infrastructure that has remained relatively cheap, namely roads. Despite some big failures like the Lower Thames Crossing, Britain ranks mid-table overall, a better performance than for any other infrastructure type. The reason for this is that roads directly benefit a much wider constituency than any given railway project: pretty much anyone in the nearby area rather than just the people within about one kilometre of a given station. What’s more, 94 percent of miles travelled in the UK are on roads (80 percent in private cars, and 14 percent on buses and coaches), so many more people see themselves as having a stake in the issue. The tendency for local obstructionism is thus weaker, and even national government tends not to end up with spiralling costs. For the bulk of the projects, funded (or part-funded) and delivered by local councils themselves, the effect is even stronger.
The UK does well when building roads and crap when building railways.
UK governments (and many PBers) are obsessed with building railways.
There's an argument that what we should be paying more attention to is indeed the things we're screwing up rather than the things we're doing OK at -- more scope to improve...
The answer in the Foundations 'Why Britain has stagnated' relates to : planning barriers, infrastructure, investment, housing, over centralisation, energy prices, gold plated processes, importing cheap labour to fix things and other stuff.
But we are nice and respect the rule law, like free speech and are slightly bonkers.
All well put, with a nice map showing I live in a place that doesn't really register on any meaningful scale (which is why we are all so happy here).
Certainly counties like poland have caught up with us fast. If the north of england was a country it would be the 2nd poorest in the oecd.
Poland is a county?
When did this happen?
Wouldn't have been allowed in the good old days.
Give it a few years and it’ll be playing regularly in the county championship.
Having travelled around europe extensively this summer there seems to be a malaise across the entire western world though it varies by country. The country i was most impressed with relatively speaking was poland.
Poland's military is designed to impress Russian spies.
Be interesting to get @TomW 's opinion while he's still here...
Jenrick is betting the house, now, on immigration being an issue 4-5 years down the line.
Well, he's not likely to be wrong is he? SKS is going to do √fuck all about it except increase it - should such a thing be possible.
Immigration numbers are falling dramatically and will not rise back to the Tory levels. The huge numbers that came over the past gour years were the result of short term factors. Jenrick will only remind the voters of the policy failure of the Tories.
It won't stop it being an issue, after all it was an issue in the Eighties even when we had net emigration in some years. The objection is not simply to the flows, it is to the cultural and societal changes from previous immigration, even in places where there are very few immigrants such as Clacton.
At some point we will have our own politicians echoing Trump in wanting legal immigrants deported.
There’s probably a multiple regression analysis you could do between the political salience of immigration and other variables.
My sense is that the primary factors are the visibility of (particularly “irregular”) migration, the absolute statistical rate of change, the amount politicians and media talk about it, and the overall performance of public services and living standards.
A combination of very negative vibes about the economy and public realm with a highly visible phenomenon of small boats and over-filled hotels and reception centres currently us quite a toxic recipe.
How the economy is doing is very important. If people feel poorer then suddenly a mass of brown people around claiming benefits become a salient issue. The times when immigration faded as a concern was boom years like the 90s.
Yebbut salience is about perception not the actualité. I believe the scenes of the AfD breakthrough, Thuringia and Saxony, have some of the lowest immigration rates in Germany? Still, as long as we have folk on the internet making the connection between brown people and benefits, who cares about reality.
I read somewhere that what really drives anti-immigration parties is when you go from basically zero immigrants in an area to some visible proportion like 5%. That freaks out people who aren't used to immigrants much more than a city with 20% going to 25% or 30%.
Hence the surge in Reform support in East Ham from 2% to 3.5%. True, they beat the LDs (not going to sugar coat that as the night's main disappointment for the party).
That's actually a bit meta, commenting on our commenting!
Quite an interesting perspective, what podcast is it snipped from?
I know. Mad, right? I think it’s some podcast attached to NPR, they seem to read PB
They would enjoy the Sunday Special on Trump.
It's a shame they didn't wait for today's Kremlin bot to turn up. Imagine them analysing how this shows the British are all crazed anti-vaxxers who hang on everything that spews from Putin's undersized cock.
I want them to analyse the collective wisdom of @HYUFD and compare it to, say, @Dura_Ace and then summarise what that means about the UK political scene
Have they mentioned our version of 9/11 yet? #neverforget #stillgrowinginourhearts #peoplessycamore
The National Trust have become the countryside wing of The Labour Party now - I am no longer a member, nor do I visit their sites, or make any donations.
They're all pretty shit anyway, tbf.
Put it another way. If Labour now own the National Trust their domination over British life is complete
That's pretty much how it seems.
I'll have to take a bit more interest in Restore Trust, who I've occasionally seen in the Telegraph or over on Conservative Home, trying to do political culture-war stuff in the NT.
It does seem to have some peculiar political links, and 'interesting' people involved.
The NT campaign modus operandi - drop *our* candidates on the Council with few votes because ballots only get a 1-2% turnout of members - reminds me of the anti-Fox Hunting campaign in the NT, or parts of the SWP playbook in Trades Unions that let them ultimately control organisations such as the NUT.
Restore Trust is based on 55 Tufton Street - should tell you everything you need to know.
Now there are many things that I don't think the National Trust does that well but I'm not having that bunch of shysters anywhere near it.
Incidentally i was in paros a few weeks ago and can concur with much of what leon said about the city especially the north side which can feel quite third world in places. Some metro trains i seemed to be the only white person on. A big decline since my last visit.
Good morning
A plane crashes on the Ukraine/Republic of China border. Which side do you bury the survivors?
Ok I give up. What is the answer?
AI would have got that...
(The answer is of course that you don't bury the survivors!)
Jenrick is betting the house, now, on immigration being an issue 4-5 years down the line.
Well, he's not likely to be wrong is he? SKS is going to do √fuck all about it except increase it - should such a thing be possible.
Immigration numbers are falling dramatically and will not rise back to the Tory levels. The huge numbers that came over the past gour years were the result of short term factors. Jenrick will only remind the voters of the policy failure of the Tories.
It won't stop it being an issue, after all it was an issue in the Eighties even when we had net emigration in some years. The objection is not simply to the flows, it is to the cultural and societal changes from previous immigration, even in places where there are very few immigrants such as Clacton.
At some point we will have our own politicians echoing Trump in wanting legal immigrants deported.
There’s probably a multiple regression analysis you could do between the political salience of immigration and other variables.
My sense is that the primary factors are the visibility of (particularly “irregular”) migration, the absolute statistical rate of change, the amount politicians and media talk about it, and the overall performance of public services and living standards.
A combination of very negative vibes about the economy and public realm with a highly visible phenomenon of small boats and over-filled hotels and reception centres currently us quite a toxic recipe.
How the economy is doing is very important. If people feel poorer then suddenly a mass of brown people around claiming benefits become a salient issue. The times when immigration faded as a concern was boom years like the 90s.
Yebbut salience is about perception not the actualité. I believe the scenes of the AfD breakthrough, Thuringia and Saxony, have some of the lowest immigration rates in Germany? Still, as long as we have folk on the internet making the connection between brown people and benefits, who cares about reality.
I read somewhere that what really drives anti-immigration parties is when you go from basically zero immigrants in an area to some visible proportion like 5%. That freaks out people who aren't used to immigrants much more than a city with 20% going to 25% or 30%.
Hence the surge in Reform support in East Ham from 2% to 3.5%. True, they beat the LDs (not going to sugar coat that as the night's main disappointment for the party).
Well obviously once an area gets over 50% immigrants anti immigration parties arent going to well for obvious reasons. The sweetspot for them is likely areas with 10 to 30% immigrants.
One of the things that would make @leon rise even higher in my estimation would be if it transpired he was a Russian sleeper bot that had been playing the long game for years.
The occasional puff posts for a certain Spectator writer have all just been misdirection.
Is there a diminution of Saturday bot activity when Leon is away?
In other news you might find interesting. And which has implications for the world economy, geopolitics, migration, you name it: the Sahel is having what may end up as the wettest rainy season in recorded history.
Nice satellite view of the Northward extent of the Green from earlier this month:
Since then it’s kept raining and large parts of Chad, Niger and elsewhere are experiencing flooding. In the next couple of weeks the West will get in on the action with- Senegal, Western Mali and up into Mauritania.
Lake Chad has been filling up too.
It’s being presented as a tragedy - which it is, this year - but there’s an interesting longer term trend potentially at play here. Global climate models generally project increased rainfall in the Sahel and Southern Sahara as the ITCZ extends North. Logical really, while the Mediterranean desertifies.
Saharan greening has happened before as witnessed by those rock artworks across the region with their antelope and elephants. The question is what would it mean for the regional economy and the world climate?
Good news for the region which is one of the most rapidly populating areas of the globe and also one of the most unstable. More mixed news for global temperature: Saharan greening is one of those feedback events that accelerates warming through lower albedo. It also likely reduces Saharan dust export into the Atlantic and both the inhibiting of hurricanes and the fertilising of regions like North East Brazil.
Jenrick is betting the house, now, on immigration being an issue 4-5 years down the line.
Well, he's not likely to be wrong is he? SKS is going to do √fuck all about it except increase it - should such a thing be possible.
Immigration numbers are falling dramatically and will not rise back to the Tory levels. The huge numbers that came over the past gour years were the result of short term factors. Jenrick will only remind the voters of the policy failure of the Tories.
It won't stop it being an issue, after all it was an issue in the Eighties even when we had net emigration in some years. The objection is not simply to the flows, it is to the cultural and societal changes from previous immigration, even in places where there are very few immigrants such as Clacton.
At some point we will have our own politicians echoing Trump in wanting legal immigrants deported.
There’s probably a multiple regression analysis you could do between the political salience of immigration and other variables.
My sense is that the primary factors are the visibility of (particularly “irregular”) migration, the absolute statistical rate of change, the amount politicians and media talk about it, and the overall performance of public services and living standards.
A combination of very negative vibes about the economy and public realm with a highly visible phenomenon of small boats and over-filled hotels and reception centres currently us quite a toxic recipe.
How the economy is doing is very important. If people feel poorer then suddenly a mass of brown people around claiming benefits become a salient issue. The times when immigration faded as a concern was boom years like the 90s.
Yebbut salience is about perception not the actualité. I believe the scenes of the AfD breakthrough, Thuringia and Saxony, have some of the lowest immigration rates in Germany? Still, as long as we have folk on the internet making the connection between brown people and benefits, who cares about reality.
I read somewhere that what really drives anti-immigration parties is when you go from basically zero immigrants in an area to some visible proportion like 5%. That freaks out people who aren't used to immigrants much more than a city with 20% going to 25% or 30%.
Hence the surge in Reform support in East Ham from 2% to 3.5%. True, they beat the LDs (not going to sugar coat that as the night's main disappointment for the party).
Well obviously once an area gets over 50% immigrants anti immigration parties arent going to well for obvious reasons. The sweetspot for them is likely areas with 10 to 30% immigrants.
The sweet spots in Britain seem to be areas with homeopathic doses of immigrants, comrade.
In other news you might find interesting. AMC which has implications for the world economy, geopolitics, migration, you name it: the Sahel is having what may end up as the wettest rainy season in recorded history.
Nice satellite view of the Northward extent of the Green from earlier this month:
Since then it’s kept raining and large parts of Chad, Niger and elsewhere are experiencing flooding. In the next couple of weeks the West will get in on the action with- Senegal, Western Mali and up into Mauritania.
Lake Chad has been filling up too.
It’s being presented as a tragedy - which it is, this year - but there’s an interesting longer term trend potentially at play here. Global climate models generally project increased rainfall in the Sahel and Southern Sahara as the ITCZ extends North. Logical really, while the Mediterranean desertifies.
Saharan greening has happened before as witnessed by those rock artworks across the region with their antelope and elephants. The question is what would it mean for the regional economy and the world climate?
Good news for the region which is one of the most rapidly populating areas of the globe and also one of the most unstable. More mixed news for global temperature: Saharan greening is one of those feedback events that accelerates warming through lower albedo. It also likely reduces Saharan dust export into the Atlantic and both the inhibiting of hurricanes and the fertilising of regions like North East Brazil.
Well fuck that. I am off to Tamanrassat in 3 weeks time. I shall be displeased to find a swamp there.
In other news you might find interesting. AMC which has implications for the world economy, geopolitics, migration, you name it: the Sahel is having what may end up as the wettest rainy season in recorded history.
Nice satellite view of the Northward extent of the Green from earlier this month:
Since then it’s kept raining and large parts of Chad, Niger and elsewhere are experiencing flooding. In the next couple of weeks the West will get in on the action with- Senegal, Western Mali and up into Mauritania.
Lake Chad has been filling up too.
It’s being presented as a tragedy - which it is, this year - but there’s an interesting longer term trend potentially at play here. Global climate models generally project increased rainfall in the Sahel and Southern Sahara as the ITCZ extends North. Logical really, while the Mediterranean desertifies.
Saharan greening has happened before as witnessed by those rock artworks across the region with their antelope and elephants. The question is what would it mean for the regional economy and the world climate?
Good news for the region which is one of the most rapidly populating areas of the globe and also one of the most unstable. More mixed news for global temperature: Saharan greening is one of those feedback events that accelerates warming through lower albedo. It also likely reduces Saharan dust export into the Atlantic and both the inhibiting of hurricanes and the fertilising of regions like North East Brazil.
Well fuck that. I am off to Tamanrassat in 3 weeks time. I shall be displeased to find a swamp there.
You’ll be safely arid there. Though even Southern Algeria has had a bit of rain this summer.
I’m off to Senegal in December, hence my interest. It should be much greener than normal, particularly in the North around Dakar. Probably more mozzies too, unfortunately.
Jenrick is betting the house, now, on immigration being an issue 4-5 years down the line.
Well, he's not likely to be wrong is he? SKS is going to do √fuck all about it except increase it - should such a thing be possible.
Immigration numbers are falling dramatically and will not rise back to the Tory levels. The huge numbers that came over the past gour years were the result of short term factors. Jenrick will only remind the voters of the policy failure of the Tories.
It won't stop it being an issue, after all it was an issue in the Eighties even when we had net emigration in some years. The objection is not simply to the flows, it is to the cultural and societal changes from previous immigration, even in places where there are very few immigrants such as Clacton.
At some point we will have our own politicians echoing Trump in wanting legal immigrants deported.
There’s probably a multiple regression analysis you could do between the political salience of immigration and other variables.
My sense is that the primary factors are the visibility of (particularly “irregular”) migration, the absolute statistical rate of change, the amount politicians and media talk about it, and the overall performance of public services and living standards.
A combination of very negative vibes about the economy and public realm with a highly visible phenomenon of small boats and over-filled hotels and reception centres currently us quite a toxic recipe.
How the economy is doing is very important. If people feel poorer then suddenly a mass of brown people around claiming benefits become a salient issue. The times when immigration faded as a concern was boom years like the 90s.
Yebbut salience is about perception not the actualité. I believe the scenes of the AfD breakthrough, Thuringia and Saxony, have some of the lowest immigration rates in Germany? Still, as long as we have folk on the internet making the connection between brown people and benefits, who cares about reality.
I read somewhere that what really drives anti-immigration parties is when you go from basically zero immigrants in an area to some visible proportion like 5%. That freaks out people who aren't used to immigrants much more than a city with 20% going to 25% or 30%.
Hence the surge in Reform support in East Ham from 2% to 3.5%. True, they beat the LDs (not going to sugar coat that as the night's main disappointment for the party).
Well obviously once an area gets over 50% immigrants anti immigration parties arent going to well for obvious reasons. The sweetspot for them is likely areas with 10 to 30% immigrants.
The sweet spots in Britain seem to be areas with homeopathic doses of immigrants, comrade.
"Best" of all is probably places which have minimal numbers of immigrants themselves, but are adjacent to places with a meaningful proportion. So there is something visible to fear, but not enough human contact to be reassured that those somethings are actually someones and there isn't so much to be fearful about.
This P Diddy arrest could blow the lid on a lot of things.
Here's the life-changing moment for Diddy: federal agents unexpectedly arrest him in a New York City hotel lobby, possibly marking his last moment of freedom.
As soon as he steps into the lobby, law enforcement moves in, swiftly stopping the music mogul and pulling him away from his entourage.
The reactions from Diddy's team are telling – they seem stunned and confused, wandering the lobby in disbelief as their leader is led away in handcuffs.
Has anyone noticed the amount of russian propoganda now filling tiktok. One video has Putin saying welcome to russia then an array of scenes showing russias best bits.
Pornography? Does it come with a free microscope to see Putin's bit?
No its worrying because it seems every fifth video on my feed is russian propoganda. Are any of you guys on tiktok.
It's a problem. I see less on Twix, but on there the major problem's porn.
As I've said before, there's a problem in gaming and kids, where in-game channels are filled with Russian propaganda. A (primary-aged) kid started spouting pro-Russian b/s to my son in school, and when asked where he got it from, he answered he was told it in the chat of a certain game. He's heard similar from other kids.
Someone pointed out that some of the RT/Kremlin-paid Tenet Media lot weren’t just doing straight political videos, but they’re on YouTube complaining The X-Men cartoon or the Star Wars spin-off The Acolyte are too woke. All opportunities to wage propaganda war are taken.
This P Diddy arrest could blow the lid on a lot of things.
Here's the life-changing moment for Diddy: federal agents unexpectedly arrest him in a New York City hotel lobby, possibly marking his last moment of freedom.
As soon as he steps into the lobby, law enforcement moves in, swiftly stopping the music mogul and pulling him away from his entourage.
The reactions from Diddy's team are telling – they seem stunned and confused, wandering the lobby in disbelief as their leader is led away in handcuffs.
In other news you might find interesting. AMC which has implications for the world economy, geopolitics, migration, you name it: the Sahel is having what may end up as the wettest rainy season in recorded history.
Nice satellite view of the Northward extent of the Green from earlier this month:
Since then it’s kept raining and large parts of Chad, Niger and elsewhere are experiencing flooding. In the next couple of weeks the West will get in on the action with- Senegal, Western Mali and up into Mauritania.
Lake Chad has been filling up too.
It’s being presented as a tragedy - which it is, this year - but there’s an interesting longer term trend potentially at play here. Global climate models generally project increased rainfall in the Sahel and Southern Sahara as the ITCZ extends North. Logical really, while the Mediterranean desertifies.
Saharan greening has happened before as witnessed by those rock artworks across the region with their antelope and elephants. The question is what would it mean for the regional economy and the world climate?
Good news for the region which is one of the most rapidly populating areas of the globe and also one of the most unstable. More mixed news for global temperature: Saharan greening is one of those feedback events that accelerates warming through lower albedo. It also likely reduces Saharan dust export into the Atlantic and both the inhibiting of hurricanes and the fertilising of regions like North East Brazil.
Well fuck that. I am off to Tamanrassat in 3 weeks time. I shall be displeased to find a swamp there.
You’ll be safely arid there. Though even Southern Algeria has had a bit of rain this summer.
I’m off to Senegal in December, hence my interest. It should be much greener than normal, particularly in the North around Dakar. Probably more mozzies too, unfortunately.
I see Aldershot was hit by a small tornado yesterday. It’s a little-known fact that the UK gets more tornados in relation to its area than other countries, including the US.
Jenrick is betting the house, now, on immigration being an issue 4-5 years down the line.
Well, he's not likely to be wrong is he? SKS is going to do √fuck all about it except increase it - should such a thing be possible.
Immigration numbers are falling dramatically and will not rise back to the Tory levels. The huge numbers that came over the past gour years were the result of short term factors. Jenrick will only remind the voters of the policy failure of the Tories.
It won't stop it being an issue, after all it was an issue in the Eighties even when we had net emigration in some years. The objection is not simply to the flows, it is to the cultural and societal changes from previous immigration, even in places where there are very few immigrants such as Clacton.
At some point we will have our own politicians echoing Trump in wanting legal immigrants deported.
There’s probably a multiple regression analysis you could do between the political salience of immigration and other variables.
My sense is that the primary factors are the visibility of (particularly “irregular”) migration, the absolute statistical rate of change, the amount politicians and media talk about it, and the overall performance of public services and living standards.
A combination of very negative vibes about the economy and public realm with a highly visible phenomenon of small boats and over-filled hotels and reception centres currently us quite a toxic recipe.
How the economy is doing is very important. If people feel poorer then suddenly a mass of brown people around claiming benefits become a salient issue. The times when immigration faded as a concern was boom years like the 90s.
Yebbut salience is about perception not the actualité. I believe the scenes of the AfD breakthrough, Thuringia and Saxony, have some of the lowest immigration rates in Germany? Still, as long as we have folk on the internet making the connection between brown people and benefits, who cares about reality.
I read somewhere that what really drives anti-immigration parties is when you go from basically zero immigrants in an area to some visible proportion like 5%. That freaks out people who aren't used to immigrants much more than a city with 20% going to 25% or 30%.
Hence the surge in Reform support in East Ham from 2% to 3.5%. True, they beat the LDs (not going to sugar coat that as the night's main disappointment for the party).
Well obviously once an area gets over 50% immigrants anti immigration parties arent going to well for obvious reasons. The sweetspot for them is likely areas with 10 to 30% immigrants.
The sweet spots in Britain seem to be areas with homeopathic doses of immigrants, comrade.
"Best" of all is probably places which have minimal numbers of immigrants themselves, but are adjacent to places with a meaningful proportion. So there is something visible to fear, but not enough human contact to be reassured that those somethings are actually someones and there isn't so much to be fearful about.
That fits a lot of places, but not afaics eg Basildon, which has a Reform MP.
Jenrick is afaics simply poisonous, and I don't see anything good coming for the Conservatives if he wins the leadership.
OTOH imo they are a sunk cost for the next several years, so should not get more than 1% of attention. There's too much to be done.
Incidentally i was in paros a few weeks ago and can concur with much of what leon said about the city especially the north side which can feel quite third world in places. Some metro trains i seemed to be the only white person on. A big decline since my last visit.
Good morning
A plane crashes on the Ukraine/Republic of China border. Which side do you bury the survivors?
Ok I give up. What is the answer?
AI would have got that...
(The answer is of course that you don't bury the survivors!)
The theory that infrastructure costs are prone to bloating when they are paid for centrally is supported by the example of the one kind of infrastructure that has remained relatively cheap, namely roads. Despite some big failures like the Lower Thames Crossing, Britain ranks mid-table overall, a better performance than for any other infrastructure type. The reason for this is that roads directly benefit a much wider constituency than any given railway project: pretty much anyone in the nearby area rather than just the people within about one kilometre of a given station. What’s more, 94 percent of miles travelled in the UK are on roads (80 percent in private cars, and 14 percent on buses and coaches), so many more people see themselves as having a stake in the issue. The tendency for local obstructionism is thus weaker, and even national government tends not to end up with spiralling costs. For the bulk of the projects, funded (or part-funded) and delivered by local councils themselves, the effect is even stronger.
The UK does well when building roads and crap when building railways.
UK governments (and many PBers) are obsessed with building railways.
There's an argument that what we should be paying more attention to is indeed the things we're screwing up rather than the things we're doing OK at -- more scope to improve...
The answer in the Foundations 'Why Britain has stagnated' relates to : planning barriers, infrastructure, investment, housing, over centralisation, energy prices, gold plated processes, importing cheap labour to fix things and other stuff.
But we are nice and respect the rule law, like free speech and are slightly bonkers.
All well put, with a nice map showing I live in a place that doesn't really register on any meaningful scale (which is why we are all so happy here).
Certainly counties like poland have caught up with us fast. If the north of england was a country it would be the 2nd poorest in the oecd.
Poland is a county?
When did this happen?
Many times
• Duchy of Poland c. 960 • Baptism of Poland 14 April 966 • Kingdom of Poland 18 April 1025 • Polish–Lithuanian Commonwealth 1 July 1569 • Partitions of Poland 24 October 1795 • Second Republic 11 November 1918 • Government-in-exile 17 September 1939 • People's Republic 22 July 1944 • Third Republic 31 December 1989
Does Poland hold the record for being refounded the most times?
Jenrick is betting the house, now, on immigration being an issue 4-5 years down the line.
Well, he's not likely to be wrong is he? SKS is going to do √fuck all about it except increase it - should such a thing be possible.
Immigration numbers are falling dramatically and will not rise back to the Tory levels. The huge numbers that came over the past gour years were the result of short term factors. Jenrick will only remind the voters of the policy failure of the Tories.
It won't stop it being an issue, after all it was an issue in the Eighties even when we had net emigration in some years. The objection is not simply to the flows, it is to the cultural and societal changes from previous immigration, even in places where there are very few immigrants such as Clacton.
At some point we will have our own politicians echoing Trump in wanting legal immigrants deported.
There’s probably a multiple regression analysis you could do between the political salience of immigration and other variables.
My sense is that the primary factors are the visibility of (particularly “irregular”) migration, the absolute statistical rate of change, the amount politicians and media talk about it, and the overall performance of public services and living standards.
A combination of very negative vibes about the economy and public realm with a highly visible phenomenon of small boats and over-filled hotels and reception centres currently us quite a toxic recipe.
How the economy is doing is very important. If people feel poorer then suddenly a mass of brown people around claiming benefits become a salient issue. The times when immigration faded as a concern was boom years like the 90s.
Yebbut salience is about perception not the actualité. I believe the scenes of the AfD breakthrough, Thuringia and Saxony, have some of the lowest immigration rates in Germany? Still, as long as we have folk on the internet making the connection between brown people and benefits, who cares about reality.
I read somewhere that what really drives anti-immigration parties is when you go from basically zero immigrants in an area to some visible proportion like 5%. That freaks out people who aren't used to immigrants much more than a city with 20% going to 25% or 30%.
Hence the surge in Reform support in East Ham from 2% to 3.5%. True, they beat the LDs (not going to sugar coat that as the night's main disappointment for the party).
Well obviously once an area gets over 50% immigrants anti immigration parties arent going to well for obvious reasons. The sweetspot for them is likely areas with 10 to 30% immigrants.
The sweet spots in Britain seem to be areas with homeopathic doses of immigrants, comrade.
"Best" of all is probably places which have minimal numbers of immigrants themselves, but are adjacent to places with a meaningful proportion. So there is something visible to fear, but not enough human contact to be reassured that those somethings are actually someones and there isn't so much to be fearful about.
Except as in rotherham where they groom and rape your own children. Still nothing to fear huh.
This P Diddy arrest could blow the lid on a lot of things.
Here's the life-changing moment for Diddy: federal agents unexpectedly arrest him in a New York City hotel lobby, possibly marking his last moment of freedom.
As soon as he steps into the lobby, law enforcement moves in, swiftly stopping the music mogul and pulling him away from his entourage.
The reactions from Diddy's team are telling – they seem stunned and confused, wandering the lobby in disbelief as their leader is led away in handcuffs.
Just like expenses, it appears that once you become an MP, your moral compass gets switched off, and the pursuit of money over and above your earned wage becomes paramount. Political donations are perfectly legitimate as long as they are declared, above board and used for campaigning/running the office and suchlike. Where it starts to stink is the sheer amount of freebies MPs seem to attract, no matter what party they represent. If the PM needs a clothing allowance for them and a partner, then fair enough, make it part of the package and showcase the best of British, but can a cabinet minister really not afford to buy their own clothes? Now the other freebies are bit more stinky and complicated. No such thing as a free lunch and all that. Footie tickets and Swifty tickets? Get to fuck, they should be buying their own. Things like Charity Ball tickets are maybe more acceptable, but it's complicated. Ed Davey taking cash to care for his kid? A tough one, but on balance, I don't like it. Farage off to the States to support an injured mate? Unacceptable. It's gone on for years, but it needs to be stricter and all the freebies stopped. Free Gear Keir and Vicky Sponge have done us all a favour by really highlighting it.
THh thing is, MPs and cabinet ministers are wildy underpaid compared to their peers in any other walk of life. All this caterwauling is just going to make it an even more unattractive profession for talented people to consider.
But they are not underpaid copmpared to the majority of the UK population - and they are supposd to be wanting the job out of a sense of public duty and service not to line their own pockets.
Now that is a poor argument when talking about nurses and teachers who are on fuck all but not when you are talking about the Prime Minister who is already on a few quid short of £167,000 a year.
This is another failing of our adoption of this idea of professional politicians - politics as a career rather than as service.
pay peanuts, get monkeys, complain about the stink. so it goes
Except under no one's definition would £167K a year be described as peanuts. And as I said, politics is supposed to be about public service, not self enrichment.
I believe Boris Johnson's phrase was "chickenfeed", not "peanuts", and that was £250k per annum not £167k.
And that was in 2009, so worth just under £400k now.
I went and looked at where the UK stands alongside the rest of the G7 on this. The USA, Canada, Germany and Japan pay their head of Government more whilst France and Italy pay less. That is including any additional payment for being an MP where applicable.
I don't think that is a particularly bad place to be.
Not to mention that after having ben prime minster they can then 'earn' £20k per speech and £1m per directorship.
Whether they know anything about what they're speaking or directing being irrelevant.
Jenrick is betting the house, now, on immigration being an issue 4-5 years down the line.
Well, he's not likely to be wrong is he? SKS is going to do √fuck all about it except increase it - should such a thing be possible.
Immigration numbers are falling dramatically and will not rise back to the Tory levels. The huge numbers that came over the past gour years were the result of short term factors. Jenrick will only remind the voters of the policy failure of the Tories.
It won't stop it being an issue, after all it was an issue in the Eighties even when we had net emigration in some years. The objection is not simply to the flows, it is to the cultural and societal changes from previous immigration, even in places where there are very few immigrants such as Clacton.
At some point we will have our own politicians echoing Trump in wanting legal immigrants deported.
There’s probably a multiple regression analysis you could do between the political salience of immigration and other variables.
My sense is that the primary factors are the visibility of (particularly “irregular”) migration, the absolute statistical rate of change, the amount politicians and media talk about it, and the overall performance of public services and living standards.
A combination of very negative vibes about the economy and public realm with a highly visible phenomenon of small boats and over-filled hotels and reception centres currently us quite a toxic recipe.
How the economy is doing is very important. If people feel poorer then suddenly a mass of brown people around claiming benefits become a salient issue. The times when immigration faded as a concern was boom years like the 90s.
Yebbut salience is about perception not the actualité. I believe the scenes of the AfD breakthrough, Thuringia and Saxony, have some of the lowest immigration rates in Germany? Still, as long as we have folk on the internet making the connection between brown people and benefits, who cares about reality.
I read somewhere that what really drives anti-immigration parties is when you go from basically zero immigrants in an area to some visible proportion like 5%. That freaks out people who aren't used to immigrants much more than a city with 20% going to 25% or 30%.
Hence the surge in Reform support in East Ham from 2% to 3.5%. True, they beat the LDs (not going to sugar coat that as the night's main disappointment for the party).
Well obviously once an area gets over 50% immigrants anti immigration parties arent going to well for obvious reasons. The sweetspot for them is likely areas with 10 to 30% immigrants.
The sweet spots in Britain seem to be areas with homeopathic doses of immigrants, comrade.
"Best" of all is probably places which have minimal numbers of immigrants themselves, but are adjacent to places with a meaningful proportion. So there is something visible to fear, but not enough human contact to be reassured that those somethings are actually someones and there isn't so much to be fearful about.
Except as in rotherham where they groom and rape your own children. Still nothing to fear huh.
Don't get tetchy just because you haven't got the willing audience you expected.
Jenrick is betting the house, now, on immigration being an issue 4-5 years down the line.
Well, he's not likely to be wrong is he? SKS is going to do √fuck all about it except increase it - should such a thing be possible.
Immigration numbers are falling dramatically and will not rise back to the Tory levels. The huge numbers that came over the past gour years were the result of short term factors. Jenrick will only remind the voters of the policy failure of the Tories.
It won't stop it being an issue, after all it was an issue in the Eighties even when we had net emigration in some years. The objection is not simply to the flows, it is to the cultural and societal changes from previous immigration, even in places where there are very few immigrants such as Clacton.
At some point we will have our own politicians echoing Trump in wanting legal immigrants deported.
There’s probably a multiple regression analysis you could do between the political salience of immigration and other variables.
My sense is that the primary factors are the visibility of (particularly “irregular”) migration, the absolute statistical rate of change, the amount politicians and media talk about it, and the overall performance of public services and living standards.
A combination of very negative vibes about the economy and public realm with a highly visible phenomenon of small boats and over-filled hotels and reception centres currently us quite a toxic recipe.
How the economy is doing is very important. If people feel poorer then suddenly a mass of brown people around claiming benefits become a salient issue. The times when immigration faded as a concern was boom years like the 90s.
Yebbut salience is about perception not the actualité. I believe the scenes of the AfD breakthrough, Thuringia and Saxony, have some of the lowest immigration rates in Germany? Still, as long as we have folk on the internet making the connection between brown people and benefits, who cares about reality.
I read somewhere that what really drives anti-immigration parties is when you go from basically zero immigrants in an area to some visible proportion like 5%. That freaks out people who aren't used to immigrants much more than a city with 20% going to 25% or 30%.
Hence the surge in Reform support in East Ham from 2% to 3.5%. True, they beat the LDs (not going to sugar coat that as the night's main disappointment for the party).
Well obviously once an area gets over 50% immigrants anti immigration parties arent going to well for obvious reasons. The sweetspot for them is likely areas with 10 to 30% immigrants.
The sweet spots in Britain seem to be areas with homeopathic doses of immigrants, comrade.
"Best" of all is probably places which have minimal numbers of immigrants themselves, but are adjacent to places with a meaningful proportion. So there is something visible to fear, but not enough human contact to be reassured that those somethings are actually someones and there isn't so much to be fearful about.
Except as in rotherham where they groom and rape your own children. Still nothing to fear huh.
This P Diddy arrest could blow the lid on a lot of things.
Here's the life-changing moment for Diddy: federal agents unexpectedly arrest him in a New York City hotel lobby, possibly marking his last moment of freedom.
As soon as he steps into the lobby, law enforcement moves in, swiftly stopping the music mogul and pulling him away from his entourage.
The reactions from Diddy's team are telling – they seem stunned and confused, wandering the lobby in disbelief as their leader is led away in handcuffs.
This P Diddy arrest could blow the lid on a lot of things.
Here's the life-changing moment for Diddy: federal agents unexpectedly arrest him in a New York City hotel lobby, possibly marking his last moment of freedom.
As soon as he steps into the lobby, law enforcement moves in, swiftly stopping the music mogul and pulling him away from his entourage.
The reactions from Diddy's team are telling – they seem stunned and confused, wandering the lobby in disbelief as their leader is led away in handcuffs.
In other news you might find interesting. AMC which has implications for the world economy, geopolitics, migration, you name it: the Sahel is having what may end up as the wettest rainy season in recorded history.
Nice satellite view of the Northward extent of the Green from earlier this month:
Since then it’s kept raining and large parts of Chad, Niger and elsewhere are experiencing flooding. In the next couple of weeks the West will get in on the action with- Senegal, Western Mali and up into Mauritania.
Lake Chad has been filling up too.
It’s being presented as a tragedy - which it is, this year - but there’s an interesting longer term trend potentially at play here. Global climate models generally project increased rainfall in the Sahel and Southern Sahara as the ITCZ extends North. Logical really, while the Mediterranean desertifies.
Saharan greening has happened before as witnessed by those rock artworks across the region with their antelope and elephants. The question is what would it mean for the regional economy and the world climate?
Good news for the region which is one of the most rapidly populating areas of the globe and also one of the most unstable. More mixed news for global temperature: Saharan greening is one of those feedback events that accelerates warming through lower albedo. It also likely reduces Saharan dust export into the Atlantic and both the inhibiting of hurricanes and the fertilising of regions like North East Brazil.
Well fuck that. I am off to Tamanrassat in 3 weeks time. I shall be displeased to find a swamp there.
Donation from an unknown donor registered in a tax haven, didn't refuse to accept it. Robert is a most trusting chap or just a bloody fool who is ready to wreck his career..
TomW has lasted 14 posts. Obviously slightly above the average Vladbot!
Fun fact:
"The Russian male name Влади́мир (Vladímir) is never abbreviated as Влад (Vlad) in Russian; the common abbreviations are Воло́дя (Volódja) or Во́ва (Vóva). The Russian Влад (Vlad) is an abbreviation of Владисла́в (Vladisláv) or a name on its own."
This P Diddy arrest could blow the lid on a lot of things.
Here's the life-changing moment for Diddy: federal agents unexpectedly arrest him in a New York City hotel lobby, possibly marking his last moment of freedom.
As soon as he steps into the lobby, law enforcement moves in, swiftly stopping the music mogul and pulling him away from his entourage.
The reactions from Diddy's team are telling – they seem stunned and confused, wandering the lobby in disbelief as their leader is led away in handcuffs.
Mate, you need to do a bit more research on what British political geeks do and don’t find interesting before coming here pretending to be one.
You dont care about potential child abuse...hmmmm. Its a view i suppose.
Thing is Sergey, you Putin bots all say the same tired racist homophonic guff that we’ve heard it all before. Like every week for the last few years.
Do have to laugh though at how far you lot have fallen - from the halcyon days of KGB infiltration of the very heights of government to posting “Muslims are potential child abusers don’t you know” on here.
This P Diddy arrest could blow the lid on a lot of things.
Here's the life-changing moment for Diddy: federal agents unexpectedly arrest him in a New York City hotel lobby, possibly marking his last moment of freedom.
As soon as he steps into the lobby, law enforcement moves in, swiftly stopping the music mogul and pulling him away from his entourage.
The reactions from Diddy's team are telling – they seem stunned and confused, wandering the lobby in disbelief as their leader is led away in handcuffs.
This P Diddy arrest could blow the lid on a lot of things.
Here's the life-changing moment for Diddy: federal agents unexpectedly arrest him in a New York City hotel lobby, possibly marking his last moment of freedom.
As soon as he steps into the lobby, law enforcement moves in, swiftly stopping the music mogul and pulling him away from his entourage.
The reactions from Diddy's team are telling – they seem stunned and confused, wandering the lobby in disbelief as their leader is led away in handcuffs.
Mate, you need to do a bit more research on what British political geeks do and don’t find interesting before coming here pretending to be one.
You dont care about potential child abuse...hmmmm. Its a view i suppose.
Thing is Sergey, you Putin bots all say the same tired racist homophonic guff that we’ve heard it all before. Like every week for the last few years.
Do have to laugh though at how far you lot have fallen - from the halcyon days of KGB infiltration of the very heights of government to posting “Muslims are potential child abusers don’t you know” on here.
This P Diddy arrest could blow the lid on a lot of things.
Here's the life-changing moment for Diddy: federal agents unexpectedly arrest him in a New York City hotel lobby, possibly marking his last moment of freedom.
As soon as he steps into the lobby, law enforcement moves in, swiftly stopping the music mogul and pulling him away from his entourage.
The reactions from Diddy's team are telling – they seem stunned and confused, wandering the lobby in disbelief as their leader is led away in handcuffs.
Mate, you need to do a bit more research on what British political geeks do and don’t find interesting before coming here pretending to be one.
You dont care about potential child abuse...hmmmm. Its a view i suppose.
Thing is Sergey, you Putin bots all say the same tired racist homophonic guff that we’ve heard it all before. Like every week for the last few years.
Do have to laugh though at how far you lot have fallen - from the halcyon days of KGB infiltration of the very heights of government to posting “Muslims are potential child abusers don’t you know” on here.
How Covid destroyed our lives, from newborns to pensioners A growing body of evidence shows that the impact of lockdown continues to affect every generation – and will do for decades to come
Yet a growing body of evidence suggests we haven’t truly turned the page on what now sounds more like a chapter from dystopian fiction. Instead, the effects of the Covid lockdowns endure, and will continue to be observed and charted for many decades to come. “We’ll probably be studying the impact of this for as long as we live,” says Adam Hampshire, professor of cognitive and computational neuroscience at King’s College London (KCL).
A startling reminder of the long-term fallout of those unprecedented restrictions came just this week, as new figures revealed that the number of people on sickness benefits rose to 3.9m, an increase of almost 40 per cent since the pandemic first hit.
That came hard on the heels of news this month that lockdowns may have caused premature ageing to teenagers’ brains. Research from the University of Washington found the measures resulted in “unusually accelerated brain maturation” in adolescents, and that this was far more pronounced in girls than boys. While the average acceleration in the development of the male adolescent brain was 1.4 years, for females it was 4.2 years.
On thread - Jenrick's reached 63% now? I think he's reasonably the favourite under current circumstances but 63% seems too high to me. A lot still to happen between now and then.
The Conference will be critical as how each of the candidates performs and more important how the membership receives the torrent of verbage spewed forth by the four.
The MPs ballot after Conference to reduce four to two - let's say Jenrick bombs and Badenoch shines, what then?
Counter intuitively, I wonder if some MPs will look at the activist reaction and think beyond the election. Watching hundreds of activists baying for blood may be good for the Party leadership election but winning real elections less so. It may be the candidate who gets the endorsement of the Mail or the Express may not be so well received in the relative privacy of the 1922 Committee meeting room and the ballot box.
It could depend on how many MPs seek the advice of their local party members and how many decide without consultation.
This P Diddy arrest could blow the lid on a lot of things.
Here's the life-changing moment for Diddy: federal agents unexpectedly arrest him in a New York City hotel lobby, possibly marking his last moment of freedom.
As soon as he steps into the lobby, law enforcement moves in, swiftly stopping the music mogul and pulling him away from his entourage.
The reactions from Diddy's team are telling – they seem stunned and confused, wandering the lobby in disbelief as their leader is led away in handcuffs.
This P Diddy arrest could blow the lid on a lot of things.
Here's the life-changing moment for Diddy: federal agents unexpectedly arrest him in a New York City hotel lobby, possibly marking his last moment of freedom.
As soon as he steps into the lobby, law enforcement moves in, swiftly stopping the music mogul and pulling him away from his entourage.
The reactions from Diddy's team are telling – they seem stunned and confused, wandering the lobby in disbelief as their leader is led away in handcuffs.
How Covid destroyed our lives, from newborns to pensioners A growing body of evidence shows that the impact of lockdown continues to affect every generation – and will do for decades to come
Yet a growing body of evidence suggests we haven’t truly turned the page on what now sounds more like a chapter from dystopian fiction. Instead, the effects of the Covid lockdowns endure, and will continue to be observed and charted for many decades to come. “We’ll probably be studying the impact of this for as long as we live,” says Adam Hampshire, professor of cognitive and computational neuroscience at King’s College London (KCL).
A startling reminder of the long-term fallout of those unprecedented restrictions came just this week, as new figures revealed that the number of people on sickness benefits rose to 3.9m, an increase of almost 40 per cent since the pandemic first hit.
That came hard on the heels of news this month that lockdowns may have caused premature ageing to teenagers’ brains. Research from the University of Washington found the measures resulted in “unusually accelerated brain maturation” in adolescents, and that this was far more pronounced in girls than boys. While the average acceleration in the development of the male adolescent brain was 1.4 years, for females it was 4.2 years.
This P Diddy arrest could blow the lid on a lot of things.
Here's the life-changing moment for Diddy: federal agents unexpectedly arrest him in a New York City hotel lobby, possibly marking his last moment of freedom.
As soon as he steps into the lobby, law enforcement moves in, swiftly stopping the music mogul and pulling him away from his entourage.
The reactions from Diddy's team are telling – they seem stunned and confused, wandering the lobby in disbelief as their leader is led away in handcuffs.
Mate, you need to do a bit more research on what British political geeks do and don’t find interesting before coming here pretending to be one.
You dont care about potential child abuse...hmmmm. Its a view i suppose.
Thing is Sergey, you Putin bots all say the same tired racist homophonic guff that we’ve heard it all before. Like every week for the last few years.
Do have to laugh though at how far you lot have fallen - from the halcyon days of KGB infiltration of the very heights of government to posting “Muslims are potential child abusers don’t you know” on here.
Your pic would look better if you smiled.
Handbags on standby.
This isn’t really a very good bot.
Can’t spell (but then none of them can) can’t engage intelligently (ditto) but can’t even post links to the nonsense s/he’s spouting? Pathetic.
How Covid destroyed our lives, from newborns to pensioners A growing body of evidence shows that the impact of lockdown continues to affect every generation – and will do for decades to come
Yet a growing body of evidence suggests we haven’t truly turned the page on what now sounds more like a chapter from dystopian fiction. Instead, the effects of the Covid lockdowns endure, and will continue to be observed and charted for many decades to come. “We’ll probably be studying the impact of this for as long as we live,” says Adam Hampshire, professor of cognitive and computational neuroscience at King’s College London (KCL).
A startling reminder of the long-term fallout of those unprecedented restrictions came just this week, as new figures revealed that the number of people on sickness benefits rose to 3.9m, an increase of almost 40 per cent since the pandemic first hit.
That came hard on the heels of news this month that lockdowns may have caused premature ageing to teenagers’ brains. Research from the University of Washington found the measures resulted in “unusually accelerated brain maturation” in adolescents, and that this was far more pronounced in girls than boys. While the average acceleration in the development of the male adolescent brain was 1.4 years, for females it was 4.2 years.
Telegraph?
We are more advanced than that, here.
Some of us use Mr Bell’s Telephone.
Some even use pagers.
I understand the last one gives you most bang for your buck.
How Covid destroyed our lives, from newborns to pensioners A growing body of evidence shows that the impact of lockdown continues to affect every generation – and will do for decades to come
Yet a growing body of evidence suggests we haven’t truly turned the page on what now sounds more like a chapter from dystopian fiction. Instead, the effects of the Covid lockdowns endure, and will continue to be observed and charted for many decades to come. “We’ll probably be studying the impact of this for as long as we live,” says Adam Hampshire, professor of cognitive and computational neuroscience at King’s College London (KCL).
A startling reminder of the long-term fallout of those unprecedented restrictions came just this week, as new figures revealed that the number of people on sickness benefits rose to 3.9m, an increase of almost 40 per cent since the pandemic first hit.
That came hard on the heels of news this month that lockdowns may have caused premature ageing to teenagers’ brains. Research from the University of Washington found the measures resulted in “unusually accelerated brain maturation” in adolescents, and that this was far more pronounced in girls than boys. While the average acceleration in the development of the male adolescent brain was 1.4 years, for females it was 4.2 years.
Telegraph?
We are more advanced than that, here.
Some of us use Mr Bell’s Telephone.
Some even use pagers.
I understand the last one gives you most bang for your buck.
Given where some of the pagers were kept, the recipients of the bang won't be able to f*ck any more...
How Covid destroyed our lives, from newborns to pensioners A growing body of evidence shows that the impact of lockdown continues to affect every generation – and will do for decades to come
Yet a growing body of evidence suggests we haven’t truly turned the page on what now sounds more like a chapter from dystopian fiction. Instead, the effects of the Covid lockdowns endure, and will continue to be observed and charted for many decades to come. “We’ll probably be studying the impact of this for as long as we live,” says Adam Hampshire, professor of cognitive and computational neuroscience at King’s College London (KCL).
A startling reminder of the long-term fallout of those unprecedented restrictions came just this week, as new figures revealed that the number of people on sickness benefits rose to 3.9m, an increase of almost 40 per cent since the pandemic first hit.
That came hard on the heels of news this month that lockdowns may have caused premature ageing to teenagers’ brains. Research from the University of Washington found the measures resulted in “unusually accelerated brain maturation” in adolescents, and that this was far more pronounced in girls than boys. While the average acceleration in the development of the male adolescent brain was 1.4 years, for females it was 4.2 years.
Telegraph?
We are more advanced than that, here.
Some of us use Mr Bell’s Telephone.
Some even use pagers.
I understand the last one gives you most bang for your buck.
This P Diddy arrest could blow the lid on a lot of things.
Here's the life-changing moment for Diddy: federal agents unexpectedly arrest him in a New York City hotel lobby, possibly marking his last moment of freedom.
As soon as he steps into the lobby, law enforcement moves in, swiftly stopping the music mogul and pulling him away from his entourage.
The reactions from Diddy's team are telling – they seem stunned and confused, wandering the lobby in disbelief as their leader is led away in handcuffs.
Mate, you need to do a bit more research on what British political geeks do and don’t find interesting before coming here pretending to be one.
The audio the bodyguard recorded of Diddy kicking somebody's back door in was grimly hilarious. As was the bodyguard's commentary.
Never quite understood that name change from Puff Daddy to P Diddy. What was he trying to achieve there?
Do you need to ask that on the 40th anniversary of Marathon changing its name to Snickers?
{somewhere in a Bedfordshire wood}
In a slit trench, covered with brush and surrounded by boobytraps… a figure in camouflage rocks itself, clutching ancient, faded, chocolate bar wrapper
How Covid destroyed our lives, from newborns to pensioners A growing body of evidence shows that the impact of lockdown continues to affect every generation – and will do for decades to come
Yet a growing body of evidence suggests we haven’t truly turned the page on what now sounds more like a chapter from dystopian fiction. Instead, the effects of the Covid lockdowns endure, and will continue to be observed and charted for many decades to come. “We’ll probably be studying the impact of this for as long as we live,” says Adam Hampshire, professor of cognitive and computational neuroscience at King’s College London (KCL).
A startling reminder of the long-term fallout of those unprecedented restrictions came just this week, as new figures revealed that the number of people on sickness benefits rose to 3.9m, an increase of almost 40 per cent since the pandemic first hit.
That came hard on the heels of news this month that lockdowns may have caused premature ageing to teenagers’ brains. Research from the University of Washington found the measures resulted in “unusually accelerated brain maturation” in adolescents, and that this was far more pronounced in girls than boys. While the average acceleration in the development of the male adolescent brain was 1.4 years, for females it was 4.2 years.
Telegraph?
We are more advanced than that, here.
Some of us use Mr Bell’s Telephone.
Some even use pagers.
I understand the last one gives you most bang for your buck.
Given where some of the pagers were kept, the recipients of the bang won't be able to f*ck any more...
Lee Hurst has certainly moved on from his comic days. On street money laundering is tacitly encouraged by the authorities. They declare huge profits which means taxes paid. No payments to utilities, landlords or the government are ever missed. The establishment takes the biggest cut in the money laundering scheme which is why they never do actually ‘fight’ the war on drugs. 8:33 AM · Sep 21, 2024 · 49.5K Views
This P Diddy arrest could blow the lid on a lot of things.
Here's the life-changing moment for Diddy: federal agents unexpectedly arrest him in a New York City hotel lobby, possibly marking his last moment of freedom.
As soon as he steps into the lobby, law enforcement moves in, swiftly stopping the music mogul and pulling him away from his entourage.
The reactions from Diddy's team are telling – they seem stunned and confused, wandering the lobby in disbelief as their leader is led away in handcuffs.
Mate, you need to do a bit more research on what British political geeks do and don’t find interesting before coming here pretending to be one.
The audio the bodyguard recorded of Diddy kicking somebody's back door in was grimly hilarious. As was the bodyguard's commentary.
Never quite understood that name change from Puff Daddy to P Diddy. What was he trying to achieve there?
Do you need to ask that on the 40th anniversary of Marathon changing its name to Snickers?
{somewhere in a Bedfordshire wood}
In a slit trench, covered with brush and surrounded by boobytraps… a figure in camouflage rocks itself, clutching ancient, faded, chocolate bar wrapper
“You don’t know, man! You weren’t there!”
You are like one of those cryptic crossword puzzles. But im interested as to why you are the only white brit on your workteam. Is there discrimination against white brits in your line of work.
This P Diddy arrest could blow the lid on a lot of things.
Here's the life-changing moment for Diddy: federal agents unexpectedly arrest him in a New York City hotel lobby, possibly marking his last moment of freedom.
As soon as he steps into the lobby, law enforcement moves in, swiftly stopping the music mogul and pulling him away from his entourage.
The reactions from Diddy's team are telling – they seem stunned and confused, wandering the lobby in disbelief as their leader is led away in handcuffs.
Comments
Linking to @Leon?
That's hardcore.
The MPs ballot after Conference to reduce four to two - let's say Jenrick bombs and Badenoch shines, what then?
Counter intuitively, I wonder if some MPs will look at the activist reaction and think beyond the election. Watching hundreds of activists baying for blood may be good for the Party leadership election but winning real elections less so. It may be the candidate who gets the endorsement of the Mail or the Express may not be so well received in the relative privacy of the 1922 Committee meeting room and the ballot box.
Still, as long as we have folk on the internet making the connection between brown people and benefits, who cares about reality.
Paying more attention to things you're screwing up should often lead to the decision to stop doing them entirely.
The occasional puff posts for a certain Spectator writer have all just been misdirection.
But we are nice and respect the rule law, like free speech and are slightly bonkers.
All well put, with a nice map showing I live in a place that doesn't really register on any meaningful scale (which is why we are all so happy here).
A plane crashes on the Ukraine/Republic of China border. Which side do you bury the survivors?
As I've said before, there's a problem in gaming and kids, where in-game channels are filled with Russian propaganda. A (primary-aged) kid started spouting pro-Russian b/s to my son in school, and when asked where he got it from, he answered he was told it in the chat of a certain game. He's heard similar from other kids.
Captain Darling: So you see, Blackadder, Field Marshall Haig is most anxious to eliminate all these German spies.
General Melchett: Filthy hun weasels, fighting their dirty underhand war!
Captain Darling: And fortunately, one of our spies...
General Melchett: Splendid fellows, brave heroes risking life and limb for Blighty!
Jenrick is dire and tanks in the polling and is ousted within two or three years and Badernoch or perhaps Johnson is the LOTO when GE 2028/9 comes around.
When did this happen?
I don't think that is a particularly bad place to be.
• Duchy of Poland c. 960
• Baptism of Poland 14 April 966
• Kingdom of Poland 18 April 1025
• Polish–Lithuanian Commonwealth 1 July 1569
• Partitions of Poland 24 October 1795
• Second Republic 11 November 1918
• Government-in-exile 17 September 1939
• People's Republic 22 July 1944
• Third Republic 31 December 1989
Does Poland hold the record for being refounded the most times?
... boy, the Russian economy must be in a bad way.
Just kidding of course, most MPs are themselves political wonks, so should enjoy it.
Now there are many things that I don't think the National Trust does that well but I'm not having that bunch of shysters anywhere near it.
(The answer is of course that you don't bury the survivors!)
One of those spooky meaningless correlations.
Nice satellite view of the Northward extent of the Green from earlier this month:
https://edition.cnn.com/2024/09/13/weather/sahara-desert-green-climate/index.html
Since then it’s kept raining and large parts of Chad, Niger and elsewhere are experiencing flooding. In the next couple of weeks the West will get in on the action with- Senegal, Western Mali and up into Mauritania.
Lake Chad has been filling up too.
It’s being presented as a tragedy - which it is, this year - but there’s an interesting longer term trend potentially at play here. Global climate models generally project increased rainfall in the Sahel and Southern Sahara as the ITCZ extends North. Logical really, while the Mediterranean desertifies.
Good discussion of this here:
https://www.metswift.com/blog/soggy-sahel-2024-causes-prospects
Saharan greening has happened before as witnessed by those rock artworks across the region with their antelope and elephants. The question is what would it mean for the regional economy and the world climate?
Good news for the region which is one of the most rapidly populating areas of the globe and also one of the most unstable. More mixed news for global temperature: Saharan greening is one of those feedback events that accelerates warming through lower albedo. It also likely reduces Saharan dust export into the Atlantic and both the inhibiting of hurricanes and the fertilising of regions like North East Brazil.
I’m off to Senegal in December, hence my interest. It should be much greener than normal, particularly in the North around Dakar. Probably more mozzies too, unfortunately.
EDIT: though, actually…https://www.reddit.com/r/DisasterUpdate/comments/1f97tp6/04092024_tamanrasset_algeria_heavy_rains_cause/
Here's the life-changing moment for Diddy: federal agents unexpectedly arrest him in a New York City hotel lobby, possibly marking his last moment of freedom.
As soon as he steps into the lobby, law enforcement moves in, swiftly stopping the music mogul and pulling him away from his entourage.
The reactions from Diddy's team are telling – they seem stunned and confused, wandering the lobby in disbelief as their leader is led away in handcuffs.
https://x.com/ShadowofEzra/status/1837185460994769305
Mate, you need to do a bit more research on what British political geeks do and don’t find interesting before coming here pretending to be one.
Jenrick is afaics simply poisonous, and I don't see anything good coming for the Conservatives if he wins the leadership.
OTOH imo they are a sunk cost for the next several years, so should not get more than 1% of attention. There's too much to be done.
https://youtu.be/grbSQ6O6kbs?si=6j6ENrHALSxjUYPV
Whether they know anything about what they're speaking or directing being irrelevant.
Is the W for Wobinson?
"The Russian male name Влади́мир (Vladímir) is never abbreviated as Влад (Vlad) in Russian; the common abbreviations are Воло́дя (Volódja) or Во́ва (Vóva). The Russian Влад (Vlad) is an abbreviation of Владисла́в (Vladisláv) or a name on its own."
Do have to laugh though at how far you lot have fallen - from the halcyon days of KGB infiltration of the very heights of government to posting “Muslims are potential child abusers don’t you know” on here.
Alex Wickham
@alexwickham
·
3h
NEW:
@BloombergUK
Saturday read
Keir Starmer promised change — two months in that’s being undone by rows about donors, freebies and warring aides
Some in Labour want Sue Gray to leave No10 after conference
She’s saying she won’t
https://x.com/alexwickham
How Covid destroyed our lives, from newborns to pensioners
A growing body of evidence shows that the impact of lockdown continues to affect every generation – and will do for decades to come
Yet a growing body of evidence suggests we haven’t truly turned the page on what now sounds more like a chapter from dystopian fiction. Instead, the effects of the Covid lockdowns endure, and will continue to be observed and charted for many decades to come. “We’ll probably be studying the impact of this for as long as we live,” says Adam Hampshire, professor of cognitive and computational neuroscience at King’s College London (KCL).
A startling reminder of the long-term fallout of those unprecedented restrictions came just this week, as new figures revealed that the number of people on sickness benefits rose to 3.9m, an increase of almost 40 per cent since the pandemic first hit.
That came hard on the heels of news this month that lockdowns may have caused premature ageing to teenagers’ brains. Research from the University of Washington found the measures resulted in “unusually accelerated brain maturation” in adolescents, and that this was far more pronounced in girls than boys. While the average acceleration in the development of the male adolescent brain was 1.4 years, for females it was 4.2 years.
Oil of Ulay > Olay!
Jif > Cif!
We are more advanced than that, here.
Some of us use Mr Bell’s Telephone.
Some even use pagers.
Can’t spell (but then none of them can) can’t engage intelligently (ditto) but can’t even post links to the nonsense s/he’s spouting? Pathetic.
In a slit trench, covered with brush and surrounded by boobytraps… a figure in camouflage rocks itself, clutching ancient, faded, chocolate bar wrapper
“You don’t know, man! You weren’t there!”
On street money laundering is tacitly encouraged by the authorities.
They declare huge profits which means taxes paid. No payments to utilities, landlords or the government are ever missed.
The establishment takes the biggest cut in the money laundering scheme which is why they never do actually ‘fight’ the war on drugs.
8:33 AM · Sep 21, 2024
·
49.5K
Views
https://x.com/LeeHurstComic/status/1837394800728764892
That’s not a trivial point. Most people trying to disguise good spelling make a mess of it by writing the easy words wrongly.
This one’s barely literate in English.
Or has he?