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Never put off until tomorrow… – politicalbetting.com
Never put off until tomorrow… – politicalbetting.com
Many years ago the late Charles Stallard, father of the current Bishop of Llandaff and much the wisest man I have ever known, said to me that while a loyal Liberal Democrat he would probably vote for any party that agreed to do nothing in education or health for ten years. His logic was that every time you meddle, you create work, waste time and lose money. It would be better to have a prolonged period of calm to allow for sober reflection on everything.
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https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Programme_for_International_Student_Assessment
So if ours are terrible, others must be truly catastrophic.
No doubt Labour and its public sector union paymasters will find a way to bugger up one of the last government's few decent achievements.
Thinking there is a 'solution' is the road to madness.
According to the report in The Age, Shah along with Cricket Australia chairman Mike Baird and England Cricket Board chairman Richard Thompson are set to meet later this month where the two-tier structure for Test cricket will be discussed....
...The report further claims, the top division of Test cricket will include seven teams -- South Africa, Australia, England, India, New Zealand, Sri Lanka and Pakistan -- while the second division will have West Indies, Bangladesh, Ireland, Afghanistan and Zimbabwe.
https://www.msn.com/en-in/sports/cricket/india-australia-england-in-talks-to-divide-test-cricket-into-two-tiers-as-shadow-of-big-3-looms-again-report/ar-AA1x1z57
Operations research has long shown that if you remove all “excess capacity” from an organisation, the result is…
“Fragmented, disorganised, understaffed, hopelessly mismanaged”….
(Not just a Labour phenomenon)
However given 400 MPs in Labour that has to be the likely pool from which a leader will come All the talent they have is likely to be in this cohort. So there has to be someone capable in that batch or else they are in real trouble.
Some will emerge but there will be many from the former cohort who think they deserve a ministerial gig and get nowhere and after a few years there will be discontent on the backbenches.
Of course in reality politicians typically come in 3 varieties - the do nothing people, terrified of cocking up further so just put a plaster on. The tinkerers that you identify like Gove, who do try a bit but usually on small problems (in fairness their boss may not agree to do big stuff). And then the ones who do do big things on big issues, but very badly due to unearned confidence in their abilities.
Actually given your thoughts on Reeves who on earth would you replace her with?
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=U9HTM9JBBO4
https://www.hollywoodreporter.com/tv/tv-news/nikki-glaser-golden-globes-monologue-jokes-1236098425/
— “This feels like I finally made it. I’m in a room full of producers at the Beverly Hilton and this time all of my clothes are on. It was worth it.”
— “I’m not here to roast you. And how could I? You’re all so famous, so talented, so powerful. I mean, you could really do anything — except tell the country who to vote for. But it’s okay. You’ll get them next time!”
— “Zendaya you were incredible in Dune. I woke up for all of your scenes. And Challengers? That was more sexually charged than Diddy’s credit card. The after party is not going to be as good this year, but we have to move on. I know ‘Stanley Tucci Freak Off’ doesn’t have the same ring to it.”
— “I look out and I see some of the hardest working actors in show business — and by that, I mean your servers.”
— “I did not know much about Wicked going into this year because I had friends in high school … Everyone loved Wicked. I loved Wicked. My boyfriend loved Wicked. My boyfriend’s boyfriend really loved Wicked.”
— “In Wicked, some people complained that the movie was ruined by people singing. And then in Joker 2, some people complained that the movie was ruined by the images on the screen and the sounds that accompanied them. I’m sorry, Joker 2. Where’s their table? Oh, they’re not here.”
— “The legendary Harrison Ford is here tonight. I was talking to Harrison back stage and after he gave me his drink order. I said, ‘Would you rather work with Zendaya or Ariana?’ And he said, ‘indica.'”
— “The Bear, The Penguin, Baby Reindeer. These are not just things found in R.F.K.’s freezer. These are TV shows nominated tonight.”
— “Eddie Redmayne did TV this year. He’s nominated for Peacock’s The Day of the Jackal. It’s about a top-secret elite sniper who no one can see — because he’s on Peacock.”
— “This is going be a very memorable evening, and maybe not even in the way that you think. I predict five years from now, when you’re watching old clips of this show on YouTube, you’ll see someone in one of the crowd shots, and you’ll go, ‘Oh my God, that was before they caught that guy.’ It could be a woman, you know. I think 100 percent of the time it’s a man. But it could be a woman. It won’t be, it never is, kinda like Best Director.”
— “I do want to remind you, if you do lose tonight, please just keep in mind that the point of making art is not to win an award. The point of making art is to start a tequila brand.”
From my friends' experience, privately educated children can have an awful time at school and there are plenty of examples of sexual and physical abuse happening at private schools, as demonstrated by the Scottish Child Abuse Inquiry. No money in the world can mitigate being raped as a child.
It's during debates like this that I remember to be grateful for the safe, secure and loving environment I grew up in, cycling to a high-performing state school in a beautiful part of Scotland, and returning to a home full of books, music and great food.
Boxing would be another sport with a botched format, but it still draws interest. Not everything has to be ordered and logical.
I think Reeves has been poor but it is not irredeemable. She can, as can SKS, turn it around. it was Annaliese Dodds before Reeves and she was terrible too.
Connor Tomlinson and Yuan Yuang both seem to be bright and have interests in specific fields.
*Part of my strategy to tempt the lefties back by discussing their amazing skills of their favourite political figure.
I've not heard of Tomlinson, but from the tiny bit I know of her Yuang does seem to have potential.
I personally quite like Matthew Pennycook as a possible candidate to progress further.
Edit: Her name is Yang, not Yuang - after looking at wikipedia.
Edit2: And Hamish Falconer hasn't had to resign from anything yet.
The three recent T20 matches with Sri Lanka were all shown live and free to air on the TVNZ 1 channel. Most sports can only dream of prime time coverage on a Saturday evening for nearly four hours.
In these times, live sport fulfills a useful function as entertainment and diversion. The Wellington Cup meeting at Trentham is also going to get main channel coverage.
It is the same in all political parties. There is some talent in there but it is mainly careerists and mediocrities. Middle Managers who want to manage things not solve them.
But how realistic is it to get audiences to be regularly interested in Ireland playing anyone in a Test match over several days when it will either be someone they are mismatched against, or the likes of Zimbabwe? How is that going to fund Irish players to stay in Test cricket and develop those skills ahead of franchise cricket across the year?
Whereas there definitely is demand from audiences, and prestige for players, for Ashes, and India vs Eng and Aus, so that is what we shall (continue to) get.
https://schoolsweek.co.uk/schools-bill-all-39-proposed-policies-and-when-theyll-start/
But while new laws are the visible bit of the iceberg, the interesting bit will be how the government chooses to read the existing statutes.
And "council of despair"?
The Trump administration has a lot of previous allies to invade. Britain, Canada, Denmark just added to the list.
It just happened much quicker with Musk than usual.
For example, put a stream on YouTube and Rumble, available anywhere except the competitor countries or where they’ve sold TV coverage, and run international ads on that stream. It will likely get millions of views over the course of an average Test, as loads of people will put it on and watch in the background, and any exciting finishes will bring in millions more. Easy to imagine someone posting on here that SA v Zimbabwe looks like an amazing final session, here’s a link to it on YouTube, and getting 50 hits just from that. Definitely put extended highlights on all of the popular platforms ASAP. Or look to sell global rights for a series to Amazon or Netflix, which are pretty much ubiquitous in the West and may drive subscribers in emerging markets.
("If there's a spare desk, you can have it" was a very very early Thatcher reform. And these days, a school's best hope of making the budget work is to be completely full.)
Though the way he treated his secretary was awful, and perhaps the start of his descent into madness.
The competition questions are:
1. Highest share of the vote in 2025 with a BPC registered pollster in a GB wide poll for each of Lab, Con, LD, Reform.
2. Lowest share of the vote in 2025 with a BPC registered pollster in a GB wide poll for each of Lab, Con, LD, Reform.
3. Number of Reform MPs on 31/12/2025.
4. Number of Tory MP defectors to Reform in 2025.
5. Number of Westminster by-elections held in 2025.
6. Number of ministers to leave the Westminster cabinet during 2025.
7. Number of seats won by the AfD in the May 2025 German Federal Election.
8. UK CPI figure for November 2025 (Nov 2024 = 2.6%).
9. UK borrowing in the financial year-to-November 2025 (Year to Nov 2024 = £113.2bn).
10. UK GDP growth in the 12 months to October 2025 (Oct 23 to Oct 24 = 1.3%).
11. US growth annualised rate in Q3 2025 (Q3 2024 = 3.1%).
12. EU growth Q3 2024 to Q3 2025 (2024 = 1.0%).
13. USD/Ruble exchange rate at London FOREX close on 31/12/2025 (31/12/2024 = 114 USD/RUB).
14. The result of the 2025-2026 Ashes series (2023 series: Drawn 2–2).
Entries must be posted on PB or PM'ed to me by the end of January. Please put the word 'competition' in your post to help me find entries.
I have entries so far from the following, if your name's not in the list below but you think you have posted an entry, please let me know. Thanks!
malcolmg
Barnesian
Omnium
NickPalmer
madmacs
Sean_F
Essexit
Taz
Benpointer
Sunil_Prasannan
HYUFD
Cookie
Malmesbury
Shecorns88
MarqueeMark
MattW
BartholomewRoberts
BatteryCorrectHorse
I'd prefer if you stuck to your rules and your manifold dreary "Reeves is shit" posts which I am avoiding like the plague.
I don't believe anyone is excusing the underage rape scandal, but "fragile flowers" are offended that it has been hijacked into an anti -ALL Muslims narrative by one poster and several of the hard-of-thinking have stuck the boot in for good measure. He tees them up and they fire them straight and true down the fairway of Islamophobia.
Interesting header and very true
And who would have expected this headline from More in Common poll today ?
'Labour on par with partygate'
Quarter of voters regret backing Sir Keir Starmer and winter fuel axe ‘worse than Partygate’,
One in four voters who backed Labour last year now regrets it, a new poll for LBC reveals.
More than half (56 per cent) of all voters now have a lower opinion of Sir Keir Starmer’s government after six months in power, damning research by More in Common shows.
The public also see taking away winter fuel payments from some pensioners and slapping extra inheritance taxes on farmers is on a par with the ‘partygate’ scandal under the Tories.
It comes as the PM heads back for a new term in Westminster today with a landmark speech on how he will drive down waiting lists and help get the NHS back on its feet.
My point was that if it’s on a free and easy platform people will watch it and share it, but if it’s on some obscure cable channel or not at all, they won’t. If someone here sends a link to willow.tv that wants you to sign up for $5 a month, no-one will click through - but if it’s on YouTube/Rumble/Twitter then they will.
That fee means - outside a few bursaries and scholarships the school can self-fund for 10-20% of its pupils - parents have to pay. And, alas, not all parents will be able to afford that fee.
That's it. There's no "privilege" outside of that. It's the small, local, independent private schools that will be hit hardest by the VAT/business rate changes, and not the big public schools that educate the very wealthy, that virtually none of us can afford, which is why this policy is so vindictive and insidious.
There has been endless playing the man not the ball recently that it’s effectively creating a constant cycle of “your side are arses” and people feeling the need to defend “their side” instead of actually critically discussing the arguments.
It’s the same with people feeling some bizarre need to throw in an attack against another poster when they haven’t even been posting - I don’t get if certain posters are living rent free in other posters heads or if they think they get cred points with their “tribe”.
There has always been a good level of knockabout and snark but it’s got a bit stupid now with the constant division.
The reality is Phillipson's career is highly likely to be sunk by the university sector imploding in 2025.
Is Inevitable West one of Musk’s sock puppet accounts?
If they sold it as primarily a better way for the emerging nations to play each other, rather than as a better way for the big teams to play each other and make more money, they’d stand a higher chance of getting everyone on board.
as
“Beatings will continue until morale improves” is to a sane personnel management policy.
As with Health & Safety, it has been used by morons who have no idea apart from reading a paragraph of an article in Forbes.
This is why I'd go the other way and support portable education vouchers.
Either double the education budget or destroy private schools. Tricky decision.
He’ll be furious at Elon Musk for misunderstanding the differences between the Overton Window in the US and UK, going too far from a position of ignorance, and basically endorsing a man far to Farage’s right who’s currently in prison for contempt of court.
Having been a school governor, I'm not altogether convinced by the header's assertion that more funding wouldn't help.
Apart from that, I wholly agree with its argument.
Though plenty of other bastards in the post.
Thank you so much for your quiz and I append below my response
1) 32 32 18 26
2) 23 21 12 16
3) 5
4) 0
5) 3
6) 3
7) 125
8) 2.5
9) 120
10) 1.1
11) 3.9
12) 1.0
13) 102
14) 3 -1
A lot of these debates - housing, education, health, crime - boil down to intergenerational wealth inequality and we're just messing around trying to fix the symptoms of it.
https://x.com/sikorskiradek/status/1876179734867951913?s=61&t=LYVEHh2mqFy1oUJAdCfe-Q
OK, here goes. For the economic data, I'm going with "No Change":
1. Highest share of the vote in 2025 with a BPC registered pollster in a GB wide poll for each of Lab, Con, LD, Reform. 35%, 32%, 17%, 28%
2. Lowest share of the vote in 2025 with a BPC registered pollster in a GB wide poll for each of Lab, Con, LD, Reform. 20%, 20%, 9%, 13%
3. Number of Reform MPs on 31/12/2025. 7
4. Number of Tory MP defectors to Reform in 2025. 2
5. Number of Westminster by-elections held in 2025. 5
6. Number of ministers to leave the Westminster cabinet during 2025. 4
7. Number of seats won by the AfD in the May 2025 German Federal Election. 88 (See what I did there?)
8. UK CPI figure for November 2025 (Nov 2024 = 2.6%). 2.6%
9. UK borrowing in the financial year-to-November 2025 (Year to Nov 2024 = £113.2bn). £113.2bn
10. UK GDP growth in the 12 months to October 2025 (Oct 23 to Oct 24 = 1.3%). 1.3%
11. US growth annualised rate in Q3 2025 (Q3 2024 = 3.1%). 3.1%
12. EU growth Q3 2024 to Q3 2025 (2024 = 1.0%). 1.0%
13. USD/Ruble exchange rate at London FOREX close on 31/12/2025 (31/12/2024 = 114 USD/RUB). 114
14. The result of the 2025-2026 Ashes series (2023 series: Drawn 2–2). Aus 4, Eng 1