In the spirit of @TSE's new PB, and the banning of all discussion of "things", I'd like to point out that I am considering making a pot of tea. But my dilemma is should I put in two tea bags or one, when often I only drink half the pot? So, arguably, just one tea bag is sufficient
However, I may develop a thirst for more tea as I drink the tea, and go on to finish most of the rest of the pot, perhaps even as much as 80-85%, thus requiring two bags if I want proper taste
An alternative is that I put a bag in a mug, and then pour the boiling water straight into the mug, but for some reason I find this method of making tea unpleasing, and I wonder if the taste suffers. This will be my seventh pot of tea in eight days. I generally have a pot once a day but I skipped a day last week because I woke up late and I only wanted coffee. The coffee was Nespresso, I find that if you press the button twice and make a double espresso from one podule you can get a more satisfying small cup of coffee
I have seven or eight cups which are suitable for espresso and fit into my Nespresso machine under the nozzle. However there is one problematic cup which doesn't quite fit but I like it because it reminds me of a holiday. Several of the cups have various colourful desings, others are more plain
Now I am going to make the tea, and then I will be available for wide ranging discussion and free wheeling debate on its flavour and warmth
Actively ducking underneath the irony flying over my head, I will seize this topic with both hands: one pot, one bag, enough water for two mugs, plenty of time to stew.
Tea always tastes better out of a pot. I don't know why. One bag will make enough tea for two cups if allowed to brew properly. I confess, for a long time I never bothered with the pot when it was just me I was making for. A shame, a missed opportunity.
One of the highlights of my working life was when my colleague answered her phone to a call from her son which turned out to be "Mum, where's the tea cosy?". There is a teenager who properly cares about tea. It made me feel more optimistic for the future of our country.
I suspect by now you will have made the tea and my input will be too late.
@mikeysmith · 48m Suspect Keir Starmer’s insistence on continuing to call it “Twitter” will be as infuriating to Musk as anything he said today.
Proper microaggression.
I thought that last night. It's bound to irritate the hell out of Musk
I'm with SKS here. 98% of the time, changing the name of a thing - whether that is a company, a pub, a sports team, a product, a stadium - is the wrong decision. The only name changes I will accept are upon marriage.
I'm now visualising you munching sadly away on a Marathon ice cream bar purchased from Bejam while driving your Datsun Leaf and bemoaning the GPO's price gouging on broadband.
That is pretty much me, yes. Also going to the Reebok Stadium (you can sell your naming rights once, but once only: it will always be the Reebok thereafter) for the visit of Leicester Fosse. And using Jif to clean my sink. I still insist on calling that soap set in the Yorkshire Dales "Emmerdale Farm". And call my local airport "Ringway".
Snickers/Marathon is a confusing one because I understand it was originally called Snickers back in the dawn of time.
Jif was also called Cif first, but changed in Britain because Cif sounded a bit like syphilis.
I've been to both Miami and JFK and I don't remember them being anything like as hideous as Gatwick. Worst airport ever was Robertsville in Sierra Leone in the 1980s with a fellow handing each entrant to the bathroom a single sheet of bog roll at the door in the event it might be required.
@mikeysmith · 48m Suspect Keir Starmer’s insistence on continuing to call it “Twitter” will be as infuriating to Musk as anything he said today.
Proper microaggression.
I thought that last night. It's bound to irritate the hell out of Musk
I'm with SKS here. 98% of the time, changing the name of a thing - whether that is a company, a pub, a sports team, a product, a stadium - is the wrong decision. The only name changes I will accept are upon marriage.
I'm now visualising you munching sadly away on a Marathon ice cream bar purchased from Bejam while driving your Datsun Leaf and bemoaning the GPO's price gouging on broadband.
That is pretty much me, yes. Also going to the Reebok Stadium (you can sell your naming rights once, but once only: it will always be the Reebok thereafter) for the visit of Leicester Fosse. And using Jif to clean my sink. I still insist on calling that soap set in the Yorkshire Dales "Emmerdale Farm". And call my local airport "Ringway".
Snickers/Marathon is a confusing one because I understand it was originally called Snickers back in the dawn of time.
Jif was also called Cif first, but changed in Britain because Cif sounded a bit like syphilis.
MODERATOR, this person has mentioned "syphilis", which is distressing me
More NHS hubs will be set up in community locations and there will be greater use of the private sector to help reduce hospital waiting lists in England, the prime minister has said. https://www.bbc.co.uk/news/articles/ckgxqnr8yw4o
Hubs sounds like Lord Darzi's obsession with polyclinics and private sector is classic Blairism, but somehow Wes Streeting is one of the great thinkers of our time.
I am imagining it’s one of those places where ignoramuses like myself tar it with a brush based on old gags or preconceptions. There were certainly many places as I drove from the airport that were no different from the Home Counties etc - could easily have been anywhere in Hampshire or Surrey by the look of the towns and villages.
I'm not as au fait with the Online Harms Bill as I ought to be. I know it will be bad and stupid, it would be both of those even if we had a rational government, which we don't.
Trudeau II tried something similar in Canada and the guy in Australia is trying something equally stupid there apparently with cross party support.
However, like the betting industry there is a simple solution, sites like this will have to move off shore and Trump's America might not be a bad place with Musk as an influencer.
What is it about the LEFT ? Mrs T was sadly so right, Socialists do not like choice because the people might not choose Socialism.
We know the Beeb have never forgiven the Tories for not giving them the second TV channel in 1956. We saw how Harold Wilson went for the Pirate Radio Ships and gave us "Wonderful Radio One". Curiously and I remember being surprised when, after 11 years of Thatcher Radio One suddenly smelt the coffee and became almost as good as Radio Caroline North had been 25 years earlier.
The fight is one between individualism and collectivism.
Also and btw I actually agree the site has become more anguished and polarised of late. But I don’t believe this is because of any one poster, eg me, much as I would like to be that important. I’m simply not
Fact is
1. The news is dominated by a particularly unpleasant story, that affects us 2. British politics itself is becoming more polarised: cf the rise of Reform (mirroring politics elsewhere in the west). Again we exhibit that 3. A lot of PB lefties, it turns out, really can’t cope with the criticism that comes with governance, as against the joys of oppositional carping. This is not helped by the new Labour government being so obviously shite, and difficult to defend
That’s it. That’s what’s happening
“It’s unpleasant for them because we are witnessing the collapse of their lifelong religion - liberal multiculturalism - in realtime. In days. That’s it “
Are we?
Any actual evidence to support that post of yours? Or was it just clearly meant as a wind up?
You are the canniest bestest wind up merchant I’ve ever come across. 🙂
Not sure that’s a good thing. 🤔
I'm no longer allowed to say factual things as they might distress people, so I will just have to let you imagine what I mean
I do need to plug LaGuardia, though. Post renovation, it’s actually pleasurable to depart from and arrive to.
How many airports can you say that about?
None in the UK, not even City which is absurdly overcrowded and also smells a bit.
Not true. Luton is really quite agreeable now, unless you want oyster bars and all that malarkey. It now has a dedicated rail-link to the main station, which takes moments, and from there you can be in London St Pancras (one of the greatest train stations in the world) in 21 minutes. Yes
Also Heathrow is great if you are flying from The Queen's Terminal or T5. Properly lush, and excellent fast links to central London - Tube, Liz Line and Heathrow Express
Unfortunately, tonight I am flying from T4. Oh well
I used Luton for the first time in my life a few weeks ago and expected some dystopian hell-hole and was shocked how pleasant (for an airport) it was. It seemed clean and organised, enough shops and restaurants bars but not some monstrosity like a 90s mall.
A remarkably concentrated number of pretty women as well.
Apologies if this post distressed anyone by mentioning Luton.
I recommend Wick airport. Minimalist, efficient, least walking of any airport I know. And a 20 minute *walk* to the town centre.
@mikeysmith · 48m Suspect Keir Starmer’s insistence on continuing to call it “Twitter” will be as infuriating to Musk as anything he said today.
Proper microaggression.
I thought that last night. It's bound to irritate the hell out of Musk
I'm with SKS here. 98% of the time, changing the name of a thing - whether that is a company, a pub, a sports team, a product, a stadium - is the wrong decision. The only name changes I will accept are upon marriage.
I'm now visualising you munching sadly away on a Marathon ice cream bar purchased from Bejam while driving your Datsun Leaf and bemoaning the GPO's price gouging on broadband.
That is pretty much me, yes. Also going to the Reebok Stadium (you can sell your naming rights once, but once only: it will always be the Reebok thereafter) for the visit of Leicester Fosse. And using Jif to clean my sink. I still insist on calling that soap set in the Yorkshire Dales "Emmerdale Farm". And call my local airport "Ringway".
Snickers/Marathon is a confusing one because I understand it was originally called Snickers back in the dawn of time.
Jif was also called Cif first, but changed in Britain because Cif sounded a bit like syphilis.
*Very* like syphilis, which used to be referred to informally as 'syph'. (I do not speak from personal experience.)
It is a fact of life at universities in the U.K. that if the student union invites a speaker about Tibet or the Uyghurs, Chinese students will attempt to have it stopped, to the point of demanding students be investigated for racism.
Not just the Chinese either, look at the university protests around feminists such as JK Rowling, Julie Bindel, or anyone vaguely in favour of freedom of speech. The students say that they feel threatened and fear for their physical safety, simply because someone is speaking who disagrees with them.
I do need to plug LaGuardia, though. Post renovation, it’s actually pleasurable to depart from and arrive to.
How many airports can you say that about?
None in the UK, not even City which is absurdly overcrowded and also smells a bit.
Not true. Luton is really quite agreeable now, unless you want oyster bars and all that malarkey. It now has a dedicated rail-link to the main station, which takes moments, and from there you can be in London St Pancras (one of the greatest train stations in the world) in 21 minutes. Yes
Also Heathrow is great if you are flying from The Queen's Terminal or T5. Properly lush, and excellent fast links to central London - Tube, Liz Line and Heathrow Express
Unfortunately, tonight I am flying from T4. Oh well
The Queen's Terminal (where I will be landing in about an hour) is pleasant enough. But it's also a long walk from the Elizabeth Line.
What was the rationale behind this stupid piece of legislation?
As Mrs T said, given a choice the people might not choose Socialism, that is the only rationale. You might point out this government is the worst since 1689, they tend not to like that, not because it might be true, they know that.
It is a fact of life at universities in the U.K. that if the student union invites a speaker about Tibet or the Uyghurs, Chinese students will attempt to have it stopped, to the point of demanding students be investigated for racism.
Not just the Chinese either, look at the university protests around feminists such as JK Rowling, Julie Bindel, or anyone vaguely in favour of freedom of speech. The students say that they feel threatened and fear for their physical safety, simply because someone is speaking who disagrees with them.
Speech that is deemed to upset the psychic balance of the universe is "dangerous" and must not be uttered lest anyone agree with it.
The Online Harms Bill can’t be very good if it effectively shuts down conversation about the country’s number 1 news story.
Although quite how it became number 1 news story is very odd and troubling.
This is the bit that scares a lot of forums.
Criminal Offences The OSB also introduces four new criminal offences.
1) Harmful communications: this criminalises sending a message if at the time of the sending ‘there was a real and substantial risk that it would cause harm to a likely audience’ and the sender of the message ‘intended to cause harm to a likely audience’.31 The definition of ‘likely audience’ includes those who might see the content after it has been forwarded or shared. ‘Harm’ is defined as ‘psychological harm amounting to at least serious distress’. As the Centre for Policy Studies and others have warned, this potentially allows for someone to be prosecuted for online content that ‘goes viral’ and causes psychological distress even if neither the spread of the content nor the distress caused by the content was intended by its creator.32 Even if no one is distressed by the content, its sender could still be in violation of the law if someone could in theory have been distressed by the content.
That's pretty much any opinion ever and almost all facts.
I don't think so. You're potentially in scope if you post something that you hope and intend will cause serious psychological harm to a likely audience.
The vast majority of posts (here or elsewhere) don't fit that bill.
That’s exactly what it does NOT say, you fucking idiot retired accountant golfer (I’m getting in all my last insults, now, before the site shuts)
I think at one time or other almost all of us have been distressed by what others have posted on here.
I can see a 'maximalist' interpretation of this being applied.
The problem is not so much that a comment might cause distress to a PBer, but rather that one PBer thinks a comment will cause distress to another PBer and reports it (even if the no distress was caused at all).
It says the comment must be intended to cause serious psychological distress. Joking aside, that really doesn't apply to much on PB. If it did most of us wouldn't be here. It'd be a place that anyone with any sense would avoid.
OK, but on Britain’s premier political discussion forum, we’re ALREADY not allowed to discuss the “thing”, because of the chilling effect of this bill.
Even though one of the things about the “thing” is that people allegedly covered it up because of its “thinginess”.
Not my call but I predict we'll be back on that very soon.
This might be a bad bill, not sure, but I find the "end of free speech!" takes to be hyperbolic and a teeny bit precious.
@TSE has just banned us from talking about “the thing”
The Bill isn’t even enacted and a moderator is using it to close down a headline debate which is dominating the news elsewhere. You don’t see how this might generally spread and kill off free speech, online, everywhere?
It is the end of PB except for the most mainstream boring moderator-approved Woke opinions. As you are boring and Woke you don’t have an issue with it. But eventually even you will when you have an opinion that others find agitating
He’s banned it because it was dominating the conversation and driving others away.
It’s important, yes, but so are other things and there was more heat than light over the last 48 hours
The phrase "still waters" is used to talk about water that doesn’t move much, like in a pond or a lake. It just stays there, doing nothing, and looking flat. Sometimes, people say "still waters" to mean something about people or other things, but mostly it’s just water that is still. When thinking about this, it’s nice to have a reasonably sized pot of tea. A big pot can be a bit much because it might go cold before you finish it, but a small one can feel like it ends too quickly, which isn’t satisfying at all
Still waters are often quiet, which makes them different from running water like rivers. They just sort of sit there, which is useful for some animals and plants. If you’re thinking about this for a while, you’d probably want to make sure your tea stays warm. That’s why the pot size is important - it should hold just enough for a couple of cups but not so much that you need to rush. Really, it’s a balance, much like still waters themselves, except they don’t have tea
The phrase is still waters run deep… the surface appears placid but can be misleading. The unknown can be menacing and trick the unwary.
And, to quote my former Irish history tutor, this yea thing you’re doing is “neither clever nor funny”
The Online Harms Bill can’t be very good if it effectively shuts down conversation about the country’s number 1 news story.
Although quite how it became number 1 news story is very odd and troubling.
This is the bit that scares a lot of forums.
Criminal Offences The OSB also introduces four new criminal offences.
1) Harmful communications: this criminalises sending a message if at the time of the sending ‘there was a real and substantial risk that it would cause harm to a likely audience’ and the sender of the message ‘intended to cause harm to a likely audience’.31 The definition of ‘likely audience’ includes those who might see the content after it has been forwarded or shared. ‘Harm’ is defined as ‘psychological harm amounting to at least serious distress’. As the Centre for Policy Studies and others have warned, this potentially allows for someone to be prosecuted for online content that ‘goes viral’ and causes psychological distress even if neither the spread of the content nor the distress caused by the content was intended by its creator.32 Even if no one is distressed by the content, its sender could still be in violation of the law if someone could in theory have been distressed by the content.
That's pretty much any opinion ever and almost all facts.
I don't think so. You're potentially in scope if you post something that you hope and intend will cause serious psychological harm to a likely audience.
The vast majority of posts (here or elsewhere) don't fit that bill.
That’s exactly what it does NOT say, you fucking idiot retired accountant golfer (I’m getting in all my last insults, now, before the site shuts)
I think at one time or other almost all of us have been distressed by what others have posted on here.
I can see a 'maximalist' interpretation of this being applied.
The problem is not so much that a comment might cause distress to a PBer, but rather that one PBer thinks a comment will cause distress to another PBer and reports it (even if the no distress was caused at all).
It says the comment must be intended to cause serious psychological distress. Joking aside, that really doesn't apply to much on PB. If it did most of us wouldn't be here. It'd be a place that anyone with any sense would avoid.
OK, but on Britain’s premier political discussion forum, we’re ALREADY not allowed to discuss the “thing”, because of the chilling effect of this bill.
Even though one of the things about the “thing” is that people allegedly covered it up because of its “thinginess”.
Not my call but I predict we'll be back on that very soon.
This might be a bad bill, not sure, but I find the "end of free speech!" takes to be hyperbolic and a teeny bit precious.
@TSE has just banned us from talking about “the thing”
The Bill isn’t even enacted and a moderator is using it to close down a headline debate which is dominating the news elsewhere. You don’t see how this might generally spread and kill off free speech, online, everywhere?
It is the end of PB except for the most mainstream boring moderator-approved Woke opinions. As you are boring and Woke you don’t have an issue with it. But eventually even you will when you have an opinion that others find agitating
He’s banned it because it was dominating the conversation and driving others away.
It’s important, yes, but so are other things and there was more heat than light over the last 48 hours
The phrase "still waters" is used to talk about water that doesn’t move much, like in a pond or a lake. It just stays there, doing nothing, and looking flat. Sometimes, people say "still waters" to mean something about people or other things, but mostly it’s just water that is still. When thinking about this, it’s nice to have a reasonably sized pot of tea. A big pot can be a bit much because it might go cold before you finish it, but a small one can feel like it ends too quickly, which isn’t satisfying at all
Still waters are often quiet, which makes them different from running water like rivers. They just sort of sit there, which is useful for some animals and plants. If you’re thinking about this for a while, you’d probably want to make sure your tea stays warm. That’s why the pot size is important - it should hold just enough for a couple of cups but not so much that you need to rush. Really, it’s a balance, much like still waters themselves, except they don’t have tea
An often tipsy great-uncle of mine used to talk about going off to "take the still waters" like it was some kind of rest and recuperation, which maybe it was, being his euphemism for whisky.
What was the rationale behind this stupid piece of legislation?
As Mrs T said, given a choice the people might not choose Socialism, that is the only rationale. You might point out this government is the worst since 1689, they tend not to like that, not because it might be true, they know that.
You know the online safety bill was enacted under the former Tory government, right? As discussed at length on previous pages.
What was the rationale behind this stupid piece of legislation?
As Mrs T said, given a choice the people might not choose Socialism, that is the only rationale. You might point out this government is the worst since 1689, they tend not to like that, not because it might be true, they know that.
In the end people comment here voluntarily, and if it becomes unpleasant they will leave.
It’s unpleasant for them because we are witnessing the collapse of their lifelong religion - liberal multiculturalism - in realtime. In days. That’s it
Horse dips in and out quite regularly anyway and Beibherli_C has been relatively infrequent. Sorry to see Matt stop posting.
(Unpauses)
Note I did not not say "stop"; I said "pause" for 1 week or 3 weeks - I think @Foxy said something similar.
I feel that PB BTL needs to calm down a bit, and I think it will do so. I'm not walking away quite so easily from a community I've been following for nearly 20 years; those who say this place is fairly unique are right.
It won't be long imho before more normal politics reasserts itself. It needs a bit of looking in the mirror for a couple of our parties who have still not worked out where they are going after last July, and what they intend to stand for, and Jan 20 to go past. It seems a good time for a break,
Personally, I have some new stuff needing starting up early this year (need some life back after various extended illness and family things). It is also that time of year where the iittle man with the bowler hat wants his information.
More NHS hubs will be set up in community locations and there will be greater use of the private sector to help reduce hospital waiting lists in England, the prime minister has said. https://www.bbc.co.uk/news/articles/ckgxqnr8yw4o
Hubs sounds like Lord Darzi's obsession with polyclinics and private sector is classic Blairism, but somehow Wes Streeting is one of the great thinkers of our time.
There is a fight in the set up of the NHS, GP practices want to take some of the money the hospitals get and for that they will do some of the stuff hospitals do well. Meanwhile hospitals want to abolish GP practices so they can see the patients before the GP Practice has messed up the diagnosis.
Wes Streeting thinks throwing money at it will solve the problems, no it won't. There is a perverse incentive to make patients wait if that means they can be forced to go private etc etc etc.
I still do not understand why we set up Nightingale Hospitals in Covid and then never used them.
@Selebian Earlier today I was thinking I hadn't seen you post for awhile and then you suddenly appear. I then notice you have just liked a post I made in December, I think a post I made well before Christmas.
Are you reading days and days of PB posts one by one in chronological order and have just caught up?
Excellent. The people who need meaningful support to stay out of poverty get it through pension credit, paid for by stopping a bung to wealthy pensioners.
We shouldn't look to make savings by denying welfare people qualify for, and need.
Well done, Rachel Reeves!
Except that she’s burned a massive amount of political capital with 10m voters for whom the benefit was withdrawn, 87.5% of whom are not in the top 10% of earners.
Even those in the upper middle, such as my parents, might like to argue that on a macro scale everyone’s energy bills go up if those who can afford to bugger off for the winter and leave their house colder don’t do so.
Possible Labour has burnt capital on WFP. Nevertheless elections are choices and it is highly unlikely a replacement government will offer to reinstate WFP. That particular choice won't be available to people like your parents.
Also change requires political capital to be spent. The only reasonable argument against means testing WFP is that the government should have picked its battles better, not that it was a bad thing to do, per se. I am doubtful even on that. WFP is a particularly egregious bung
What was the rationale behind this stupid piece of legislation?
As Mrs T said, given a choice the people might not choose Socialism, that is the only rationale. You might point out this government is the worst since 1689, they tend not to like that, not because it might be true, they know that.
You know the online safety bill was enacted under the former Tory government, right? As discussed at length on previous pages.
Not just enacted (ie. not like, for instance, the Edinburgh Trams which was forced on a minority Holyrood government). Sponsored by them, specifically Ms Michelle Donellan (later on anyway) and Lord Parkinson (Whitley Bay).
In the end people comment here voluntarily, and if it becomes unpleasant they will leave.
It’s unpleasant for them because we are witnessing the collapse of their lifelong religion - liberal multiculturalism - in realtime. In days. That’s it
Horse dips in and out quite regularly anyway and Beibherli_C has been relatively infrequent. Sorry to see Matt stop posting.
(Unpauses)
Note I did not not say "stop"; I said "pause" for 1 week or 3 weeks - I think @Foxy said something similar.
I feel that PB BTL needs to calm down a bit, and I think it will do so. I'm not walking away quite so easily from a community I've been following for nearly 20 years; those who say this place is fairly unique are right.
It won't be long imho before more normal politics reasserts itself. It needs a bit of looking in the mirror for a couple of our parties who have still not worked out where they are going after last July, and what they intend to stand for, and Jan 20 to go past. It seems a good time for a break,
Personally, I have some new stuff needing starting up early this year (need some life back after various extended illness and family things). It is also that time of year where the iittle man with the bowler hat wants his information.
ATB.
(Repauses)
I hope you continue contributing to PB
It is true PB has been very frenetic recently and some posters have left, but I remember the times when Johnson, Truss and Sunak were in office when similar periods occurred but we all benefit from a wide expression of views but frankly do not need the personal attacks which can be quite nasty
I would add we all need to be take care not to compromise @TSE snd the site owners and maybe exercise prudence
However, Musk's DOGE is not actually a governmental department, so is Musk going to be a US official?
No, he’s definitely not going to be a government official.
He’s an unpaid advisor to the Executive.
An interesting followup question is who is paying the salaries of DOGE employees, and what is the legal entity that pays them?
Do we know if he will be unpaid?
A "Student's Guide to the Presidency" says...
Although commissions can be created either by the president or by Congress, they are usually placed within the executive office. [...]
Although it is generally recognized that presidents have the power to establish commissions, they often seek congressional approval anyway. One reason for requesting congressional authorization to form a commission is that the funds required to operate and staff the commission are then specifically appropriated by Congress. Some presidential commissions, however, are created by an executive order of the president and are financed by emergency, executive, or special projects funds, which are appropriated by Congress to be spent at the president's discretion. President Herbert C. Hoover (1929–1933), who significantly expanded the use of presidential commissions by appointing 62 during his first sixteen months in office, reportedly raised at least $2 million in private funds to finance them.
More NHS hubs will be set up in community locations and there will be greater use of the private sector to help reduce hospital waiting lists in England, the prime minister has said. https://www.bbc.co.uk/news/articles/ckgxqnr8yw4o
Hubs sounds like Lord Darzi's obsession with polyclinics and private sector is classic Blairism, but somehow Wes Streeting is one of the great thinkers of our time.
There is a fight in the set up of the NHS, GP practices want to take some of the money the hospitals get and for that they will do some of the stuff hospitals do well. Meanwhile hospitals want to abolish GP practices so they can see the patients before the GP Practice has messed up the diagnosis.
Wes Streeting thinks throwing money at it will solve the problems, no it won't. There is a perverse incentive to make patients wait if that means they can be forced to go private etc etc etc.
I still do not understand why we set up Nightingale Hospitals in Covid and then never used them.
"Meanwhile hospitals want to abolish GP practices so they can see the patients before the GP Practice has messed up the diagnosis."
Erm?? Really? I've had conversations over the years with my GP now and again along the lines of 'well, the local hospital has issued us with guidelines not to refer people with X unless the following tests are at Y" etc etc.
More NHS hubs will be set up in community locations and there will be greater use of the private sector to help reduce hospital waiting lists in England, the prime minister has said. https://www.bbc.co.uk/news/articles/ckgxqnr8yw4o
Hubs sounds like Lord Darzi's obsession with polyclinics and private sector is classic Blairism, but somehow Wes Streeting is one of the great thinkers of our time.
There is a fight in the set up of the NHS, GP practices want to take some of the money the hospitals get and for that they will do some of the stuff hospitals do well. Meanwhile hospitals want to abolish GP practices so they can see the patients before the GP Practice has messed up the diagnosis.
Wes Streeting thinks throwing money at it will solve the problems, no it won't. There is a perverse incentive to make patients wait if that means they can be forced to go private etc etc etc.
I still do not understand why we set up Nightingale Hospitals in Covid and then never used them.
The Nightingale Hospitals were subtly named.
This is because their function was actually closer to the hospitals of Florence Nightingale than a modern hospital. A clean bed, indoors, with a toilet available.
They were not really for treatment - they were so that if scenes that happened in Northern Italy and a couple of cities in Spain, people would be dying in a decent bed, rather than in the street.
There was little medical equipment beyond some oxygen and ventilators. They would have been “staffed” by anyone they could find - including airplane cabin crew, who have to do a fair amount of first aid training.
They would have no use whatsoever in treating patients in normal times.
It is a fact of life at universities in the U.K. that if the student union invites a speaker about Tibet or the Uyghurs, Chinese students will attempt to have it stopped, to the point of demanding students be investigated for racism.
Not just the Chinese either, look at the university protests around feminists such as JK Rowling, Julie Bindel, or anyone vaguely in favour of freedom of speech. The students say that they feel threatened and fear for their physical safety, simply because someone is speaking who disagrees with them.
Odd. I thought the last government introduced the Higher Education (Freedom of Speech) Act in May 2023. Are you saying an Act by the last government wasn't thought through well?
I do need to plug LaGuardia, though. Post renovation, it’s actually pleasurable to depart from and arrive to.
How many airports can you say that about?
None in the UK, not even City which is absurdly overcrowded and also smells a bit.
City used to be like that but then they pushed into leisure travel so it got overcrowded, though it seems they've got planning approval to expand the terminal building so hopefully that will help with the overcrowding.
Flatland airport (also known as DSA) was quite pleasant by all accounts - but unfortunately you couldn't fly anywhere other than Poland or Magaluf.
Peel Holdings pulled the plug but I understand it is to start operating again soon. Their cunning plan to turn it into development land seems to have failed for now, no doubt at some cost to the taxpayer.
I flew from Flatland (aka DSA, aka RHA, aka RHADS) about 20 years ago to Geneva. It was lovely. Uncrowded, efficient, comfortable. It didn't have hundreds of bars but the one or two it had were fine.
Macron has reportedly intervened to urge Ukraine to be "realistic about territory".
This is singularly unhelpful and demonstrates that Macron has learnt nothing from the war since 2022. It is not Ukraine's desire to retain as much of itself as possible that blocks peace, but Russia's desire to seize the sovereign territory of another country.
There is, sadly, very little chance that the major European powers - Britain, France, or Germany - will step into the breach if Trump cuts support for Ukraine.
We are choosing a desperately dangerous future by acquiescing to Russian subjugation of a democracy. It doesn't have to be this way, but time is running out to change course.
The idea that government in those countries could fund and support a war in Ukraine against the wishes of the US without collapsing immediately is simply naive.
I don't think Trump is actively pro-Russia*. He's simply indifferent about the war. If European countries wanted to spend money on US armaments to send them to Ukraine I don't think he'd stand in the way.
* He greatly admires Putin as a strongman leader, but that's a slightly different thing.
Most of the US opposition to the Ukraine war is based on the cost of it, rather than taking one side or the other.
Not helped by the way they do military accounting such that sending some old obsolete weapons system “costs” the price of the new latest version the Americans are ordering for themselves, not helped by the comparative lack of aid given to domestic disaster relief, and from a political point of view the Biden family’s clear personal interest in Ukraine in recent years.
Macron has reportedly intervened to urge Ukraine to be "realistic about territory".
This is singularly unhelpful and demonstrates that Macron has learnt nothing from the war since 2022. It is not Ukraine's desire to retain as much of itself as possible that blocks peace, but Russia's desire to seize the sovereign territory of another country.
There is, sadly, very little chance that the major European powers - Britain, France, or Germany - will step into the breach if Trump cuts support for Ukraine.
We are choosing a desperately dangerous future by acquiescing to Russian subjugation of a democracy. It doesn't have to be this way, but time is running out to change course.
The idea that government in those countries could fund and support a war in Ukraine against the wishes of the US without collapsing immediately is simply naive.
I don't think Trump is actively pro-Russia*. He's simply indifferent about the war. If European countries wanted to spend money on US armaments to send them to Ukraine I don't think he'd stand in the way.
* He greatly admires Putin as a strongman leader, but that's a slightly different thing.
Most of the US opposition to the Ukraine war is based on the cost of it, rather than taking one side or the other.
Not helped by the way they do military accounting such that sending some old obsolete weapons system “costs” the price of the new latest version the Americans are ordering for themselves, not helped by the comparative lack of aid given to domestic disaster relief, and from a political point of view the Biden family’s clear personal interest in Ukraine in recent years.
Rubbish. The GOP's opposition was plainly because Biden was in favour of helping Ukraine, and Biden and the Dems were more of n enemy than Russia.
The Online Harms Bill can’t be very good if it effectively shuts down conversation about the country’s number 1 news story.
Although quite how it became number 1 news story is very odd and troubling.
This is the bit that scares a lot of forums.
Criminal Offences The OSB also introduces four new criminal offences.
1) Harmful communications: this criminalises sending a message if at the time of the sending ‘there was a real and substantial risk that it would cause harm to a likely audience’ and the sender of the message ‘intended to cause harm to a likely audience’.31 The definition of ‘likely audience’ includes those who might see the content after it has been forwarded or shared. ‘Harm’ is defined as ‘psychological harm amounting to at least serious distress’. As the Centre for Policy Studies and others have warned, this potentially allows for someone to be prosecuted for online content that ‘goes viral’ and causes psychological distress even if neither the spread of the content nor the distress caused by the content was intended by its creator.32 Even if no one is distressed by the content, its sender could still be in violation of the law if someone could in theory have been distressed by the content.
That's pretty much any opinion ever and almost all facts.
I don't think so. You're potentially in scope if you post something that you hope and intend will cause serious psychological harm to a likely audience.
The vast majority of posts (here or elsewhere) don't fit that bill.
That’s exactly what it does NOT say, you fucking idiot retired accountant golfer (I’m getting in all my last insults, now, before the site shuts)
I think at one time or other almost all of us have been distressed by what others have posted on here.
I can see a 'maximalist' interpretation of this being applied.
The problem is not so much that a comment might cause distress to a PBer, but rather that one PBer thinks a comment will cause distress to another PBer and reports it (even if the no distress was caused at all).
It says the comment must be intended to cause serious psychological distress. Joking aside, that really doesn't apply to much on PB. If it did most of us wouldn't be here. It'd be a place that anyone with any sense would avoid.
OK, but on Britain’s premier political discussion forum, we’re ALREADY not allowed to discuss the “thing”, because of the chilling effect of this bill.
Even though one of the things about the “thing” is that people allegedly covered it up because of its “thinginess”.
Not my call but I predict we'll be back on that very soon.
This might be a bad bill, not sure, but I find the "end of free speech!" takes to be hyperbolic and a teeny bit precious.
@TSE has just banned us from talking about “the thing”
The Bill isn’t even enacted and a moderator is using it to close down a headline debate which is dominating the news elsewhere. You don’t see how this might generally spread and kill off free speech, online, everywhere?
It is the end of PB except for the most mainstream boring moderator-approved Woke opinions. As you are boring and Woke you don’t have an issue with it. But eventually even you will when you have an opinion that others find agitating
He’s banned it because it was dominating the conversation and driving others away.
It’s important, yes, but so are other things and there was more heat than light over the last 48 hours
The phrase "still waters" is used to talk about water that doesn’t move much, like in a pond or a lake. It just stays there, doing nothing, and looking flat. Sometimes, people say "still waters" to mean something about people or other things, but mostly it’s just water that is still. When thinking about this, it’s nice to have a reasonably sized pot of tea. A big pot can be a bit much because it might go cold before you finish it, but a small one can feel like it ends too quickly, which isn’t satisfying at all
Still waters are often quiet, which makes them different from running water like rivers. They just sort of sit there, which is useful for some animals and plants. If you’re thinking about this for a while, you’d probably want to make sure your tea stays warm. That’s why the pot size is important - it should hold just enough for a couple of cups but not so much that you need to rush. Really, it’s a balance, much like still waters themselves, except they don’t have tea
The phrase is still waters run deep… the surface appears placid but can be misleading. The unknown can be menacing and trick the unwary.
And, to quote my former Irish history tutor, this yea thing you’re doing is “neither clever nor funny”
Which Booker Prize winning novelist wrote a novel called 'Still Waters'?
It is a fact of life at universities in the U.K. that if the student union invites a speaker about Tibet or the Uyghurs, Chinese students will attempt to have it stopped, to the point of demanding students be investigated for racism.
Not just the Chinese either, look at the university protests around feminists such as JK Rowling, Julie Bindel, or anyone vaguely in favour of freedom of speech. The students say that they feel threatened and fear for their physical safety, simply because someone is speaking who disagrees with them.
Odd. I thought the last government introduced the Higher Education (Freedom of Speech) Act in May 2023. Are you saying an Act by the last government wasn't thought through well?
Yes.
On the face of it, the sum total of what they’ve achieved is that
1) the university will need to consider the free speech aspect of the talk by an Uyghur 2) but not go ahead on the grounds that it would be distressing to Chinese irredentists. And therefore the live stream would be illegal…
@mikeysmith · 48m Suspect Keir Starmer’s insistence on continuing to call it “Twitter” will be as infuriating to Musk as anything he said today.
Proper microaggression.
I thought that last night. It's bound to irritate the hell out of Musk
I'm with SKS here. 98% of the time, changing the name of a thing - whether that is a company, a pub, a sports team, a product, a stadium - is the wrong decision. The only name changes I will accept are upon marriage.
I'm now visualising you munching sadly away on a Marathon ice cream bar purchased from Bejam while driving your Datsun Leaf and bemoaning the GPO's price gouging on broadband.
That is pretty much me, yes. Also going to the Reebok Stadium (you can sell your naming rights once, but once only: it will always be the Reebok thereafter) for the visit of Leicester Fosse. And using Jif to clean my sink. I still insist on calling that soap set in the Yorkshire Dales "Emmerdale Farm". And call my local airport "Ringway".
Snickers/Marathon is a confusing one because I understand it was originally called Snickers back in the dawn of time.
Jif was also called Cif first, but changed in Britain because Cif sounded a bit like syphilis.
MODERATOR, this person has mentioned "syphilis", which is distressing me
I'm going to talk to my corporate lawyer friend in London. He'll know if there is something up with the ket supply.
A Tate premiership would make Trump look like Robert Runcie.
I think the power of the algorithm allied to the Trump victory is actually convincing a lot of these people that the Anglo Saxon world is in ferment and poised for revolution. I assume that's pretty much the world that Tate and his ilk see on social media now.
Trump might be emboldened by Trudeau's resignation into thinking he can force other unfriendly leaders to step down.
Yup. This has been going on in common with Musk since Trump started to threaten Trudeau over tariffs, and calling him "the Governor of the State of Canada", about a month ago. Starner might have to get prepared for Musk's rhetoric to be linked to particular action.
Macron has reportedly intervened to urge Ukraine to be "realistic about territory".
This is singularly unhelpful and demonstrates that Macron has learnt nothing from the war since 2022. It is not Ukraine's desire to retain as much of itself as possible that blocks peace, but Russia's desire to seize the sovereign territory of another country.
There is, sadly, very little chance that the major European powers - Britain, France, or Germany - will step into the breach if Trump cuts support for Ukraine.
We are choosing a desperately dangerous future by acquiescing to Russian subjugation of a democracy. It doesn't have to be this way, but time is running out to change course.
The idea that government in those countries could fund and support a war in Ukraine against the wishes of the US without collapsing immediately is simply naive.
I don't think Trump is actively pro-Russia*. He's simply indifferent about the war. If European countries wanted to spend money on US armaments to send them to Ukraine I don't think he'd stand in the way.
* He greatly admires Putin as a strongman leader, but that's a slightly different thing.
Most of the US opposition to the Ukraine war is based on the cost of it, rather than taking one side or the other.
Not helped by the way they do military accounting such that sending some old obsolete weapons system “costs” the price of the new latest version the Americans are ordering for themselves, not helped by the comparative lack of aid given to domestic disaster relief, and from a political point of view the Biden family’s clear personal interest in Ukraine in recent years.
The cost is trivial, as a part of the US budget.
The opposition is based on the Republican right believing that Putin is the defender of white, Christian,civilisation.
The Online Harms Bill can’t be very good if it effectively shuts down conversation about the country’s number 1 news story.
Although quite how it became number 1 news story is very odd and troubling.
This is the bit that scares a lot of forums.
Criminal Offences The OSB also introduces four new criminal offences.
1) Harmful communications: this criminalises sending a message if at the time of the sending ‘there was a real and substantial risk that it would cause harm to a likely audience’ and the sender of the message ‘intended to cause harm to a likely audience’.31 The definition of ‘likely audience’ includes those who might see the content after it has been forwarded or shared. ‘Harm’ is defined as ‘psychological harm amounting to at least serious distress’. As the Centre for Policy Studies and others have warned, this potentially allows for someone to be prosecuted for online content that ‘goes viral’ and causes psychological distress even if neither the spread of the content nor the distress caused by the content was intended by its creator.32 Even if no one is distressed by the content, its sender could still be in violation of the law if someone could in theory have been distressed by the content.
I do need to plug LaGuardia, though. Post renovation, it’s actually pleasurable to depart from and arrive to.
How many airports can you say that about?
None in the UK, not even City which is absurdly overcrowded and also smells a bit.
City used to be like that but then they pushed into leisure travel so it got overcrowded, though it seems they've got planning approval to expand the terminal building so hopefully that will help with the overcrowding.
Flatland airport (also known as DSA) was quite pleasant by all accounts - but unfortunately you couldn't fly anywhere other than Poland or Magaluf.
Peel Holdings pulled the plug but I understand it is to start operating again soon. Their cunning plan to turn it into development land seems to have failed for now, no doubt at some cost to the taxpayer.
I flew from Flatland (aka DSA, aka RHA, aka RHADS) about 20 years ago to Geneva. It was lovely. Uncrowded, efficient, comfortable. It didn't have hundreds of bars but the one or two it had were fine.
See also Teesside from which I will be collecting twin A tonight (having collected twin B on Friday) and traveling from at the end of the month.
It’s nice to be able to leave at 4:30 and arrive at 5 (latest) for a flight leaving at 5:50. Should even have time for a pint in the lounge before we go
What was the rationale behind this stupid piece of legislation?
As Mrs T said, given a choice the people might not choose Socialism, that is the only rationale. You might point out this government is the worst since 1689, they tend not to like that, not because it might be true, they know that.
You know the online safety bill was enacted under the former Tory government, right? As discussed at length on previous pages.
To which it appears that the only political opposition to it, was on the basis that it didn’t go far enough.
Damn the lot of them, if it’s not yet illegal to say that.
I do need to plug LaGuardia, though. Post renovation, it’s actually pleasurable to depart from and arrive to.
How many airports can you say that about?
None in the UK, not even City which is absurdly overcrowded and also smells a bit.
City used to be like that but then they pushed into leisure travel so it got overcrowded, though it seems they've got planning approval to expand the terminal building so hopefully that will help with the overcrowding.
Flatland airport (also known as DSA) was quite pleasant by all accounts - but unfortunately you couldn't fly anywhere other than Poland or Magaluf.
Peel Holdings pulled the plug but I understand it is to start operating again soon. Their cunning plan to turn it into development land seems to have failed for now, no doubt at some cost to the taxpayer.
I flew from Flatland (aka DSA, aka RHA, aka RHADS) about 20 years ago to Geneva. It was lovely. Uncrowded, efficient, comfortable. It didn't have hundreds of bars but the one or two it had were fine.
See also Teesside from which I will be collecting twin A tonight (having collected twin B on Friday) and traveling from at the end of the month.
It’s nice to be able to leave at 4:30 and arrive at 5 (latest) for a flight leaving at 5:50. Should even have time for a pint in the lounge before we go
I have also flown from Teesside. Also about 20 years ago. To Reykjavik.
People have had enough of Elon Musk interfering with our country’s democracy when he clearly knows nothing about Britain.
It’s time to summon the US ambassador to ask why an incoming US official is suggesting the UK government should be overthrown.
Isn't the US ambassador a political appointment, so quite the wrong person to ask about someone speaking for the incoming administration? Maybe it isn't time to summon the ambassador. Wait a few weeks and you're talking to the right person.
Macron has reportedly intervened to urge Ukraine to be "realistic about territory".
This is singularly unhelpful and demonstrates that Macron has learnt nothing from the war since 2022. It is not Ukraine's desire to retain as much of itself as possible that blocks peace, but Russia's desire to seize the sovereign territory of another country.
There is, sadly, very little chance that the major European powers - Britain, France, or Germany - will step into the breach if Trump cuts support for Ukraine.
We are choosing a desperately dangerous future by acquiescing to Russian subjugation of a democracy. It doesn't have to be this way, but time is running out to change course.
The idea that government in those countries could fund and support a war in Ukraine against the wishes of the US without collapsing immediately is simply naive.
I don't think Trump is actively pro-Russia*. He's simply indifferent about the war. If European countries wanted to spend money on US armaments to send them to Ukraine I don't think he'd stand in the way.
* He greatly admires Putin as a strongman leader, but that's a slightly different thing.
Most of the US opposition to the Ukraine war is based on the cost of it, rather than taking one side or the other.
Not helped by the way they do military accounting such that sending some old obsolete weapons system “costs” the price of the new latest version the Americans are ordering for themselves, not helped by the comparative lack of aid given to domestic disaster relief, and from a political point of view the Biden family’s clear personal interest in Ukraine in recent years.
The cost is trivial, as a part of the US budget.
The opposition is based on the Republican right believing that Putin is the defender of white, Christian,civilisation.
I think those two dynamics are operating together and appealing to different groups of people. It's a bit like the old anti-Nuke and pacifist groupings on the left in the cold war. Some were simply horrified by the prospect of war, or frustrated that spending on missiles wasn't being diverted to health or social security, others were true believers - tankies.
I think there are some American politicians being vaguely isolationist in the US tradition, and some who really do believe Putin is their guy. The latter are dangerous. If they prevail, then at some stage we need to start seriously considering the prospect of the USA becoming a hostile actor.
Excellent. The people who need meaningful support to stay out of poverty get it through pension credit, paid for by stopping a bung to wealthy pensioners.
We shouldn't look to make savings by denying welfare people qualify for, and need.
Well done, Rachel Reeves!
Except that she’s burned a massive amount of political capital with 10m voters for whom the benefit was withdrawn, 87.5% of whom are not in the top 10% of earners.
Even those in the upper middle, such as my parents, might like to argue that on a macro scale everyone’s energy bills go up if those who can afford to bugger off for the winter and leave their house colder don’t do so.
Possible Labour has burnt capital on WFP. Nevertheless elections are choices and it is highly unlikely a replacement government will offer to reinstate WFP. That particular choice won't be available to people like your parents.
Also change requires political capital to be spent. The only reasonable argument against means testing WFP is that the government should have picked its battles better, not that it was a bad thing to do, per se. I am doubtful even on that. WFP is a particularly egregious bung
My point is that the amount of political capital spent was disproportionate to the amount of money raised.
They should have been prioritising the bad news for those things that raise serious amounts of money, but instead they’ve wasted the political capital on a bunch of minor things that not only raise little, but also annoy identifiable and organised groups of people.
The government have been attempting to increase the uptake of Pension Credit for years. There have been annual push to help those on low incomes avoid getting into debt and suffering health effects. If cancelling the WFA for those who least need it, in order to help those for which it was designed, then what's the problem?
Most qualifying pensioners were put off filing in the forms. Help was always available and I have done many of these forms on behalf of pensioners. An example of a beneficial outcome where money has gone to those for which it is intended.
Could the same be said about PPE contracts during the Covid years?
It is a fact of life at universities in the U.K. that if the student union invites a speaker about Tibet or the Uyghurs, Chinese students will attempt to have it stopped, to the point of demanding students be investigated for racism.
Not just the Chinese either, look at the university protests around feminists such as JK Rowling, Julie Bindel, or anyone vaguely in favour of freedom of speech. The students say that they feel threatened and fear for their physical safety, simply because someone is speaking who disagrees with them.
Odd. I thought the last government introduced the Higher Education (Freedom of Speech) Act in May 2023. Are you saying an Act by the last government wasn't thought through well?
The difference between the two bills is that one refers to the holding of the event itself, and the other to the mention of it in online forums of social media sites. Controversial speakers might end up only finding an audience by means of old-fashioned flyers being handed out and bills posted on walls or notice boards.
I do need to plug LaGuardia, though. Post renovation, it’s actually pleasurable to depart from and arrive to.
How many airports can you say that about?
None in the UK, not even City which is absurdly overcrowded and also smells a bit.
City used to be like that but then they pushed into leisure travel so it got overcrowded, though it seems they've got planning approval to expand the terminal building so hopefully that will help with the overcrowding.
Flatland airport (also known as DSA) was quite pleasant by all accounts - but unfortunately you couldn't fly anywhere other than Poland or Magaluf.
Peel Holdings pulled the plug but I understand it is to start operating again soon. Their cunning plan to turn it into development land seems to have failed for now, no doubt at some cost to the taxpayer.
After they have found some money (preferably the government’s) to repair Ardrossan Harbour and the Bridgewater Canal, maybe they’ll start on the airport.
@Selebian Earlier today I was thinking I hadn't seen you post for awhile and then you suddenly appear. I then notice you have just liked a post I made in December, I think a post I made well before Christmas.
Are you reading days and days of PB posts one by one in chronological order and have just caught up?
@kjh (as I see I'm now de-threaded) Well, you know. You miss a couple of days over Christmas and it takes ages to catch up!
I don't tend to post a lot when off work - PB is mostly while I'm waiting for something to happen at work, e.g. when I'm running something that will take <10 minutes and needs half monitoring, I'll dip in. Also read a bit out of work, but rarely post much, normally busy with the family. So I'd read a bit over Christmas etc but probably not posted.
Re the like, I was idly wondering when I had posted last so was on that thread and came to the comment you replied to. The point about my tenuous connection to our turkey supplier was also well made - though we're on first name terms now and the turkey now has my name on its label, rather than my mother-in-law's as it was for the first few years!
More NHS hubs will be set up in community locations and there will be greater use of the private sector to help reduce hospital waiting lists in England, the prime minister has said. https://www.bbc.co.uk/news/articles/ckgxqnr8yw4o
Hubs sounds like Lord Darzi's obsession with polyclinics and private sector is classic Blairism, but somehow Wes Streeting is one of the great thinkers of our time.
There is a fight in the set up of the NHS, GP practices want to take some of the money the hospitals get and for that they will do some of the stuff hospitals do well. Meanwhile hospitals want to abolish GP practices so they can see the patients before the GP Practice has messed up the diagnosis.
Wes Streeting thinks throwing money at it will solve the problems, no it won't. There is a perverse incentive to make patients wait if that means they can be forced to go private etc etc etc.
I still do not understand why we set up Nightingale Hospitals in Covid and then never used them.
Nightingale Hospitals were an emergency measure designed to do one thing (treat COVID-19 patients), reliant on an emergency call-up of staff. There's not much you can do with them post-crisis.
Bring it on. It's hilarious when the likes of Tate try to turn an online status into something real.
I presume he's doing it as a grift. Set up a political party. Take people's subscriptions. Not many will be nuts enough to join a party led by Andrew Tate, but some will. Whatever money he gets will hopefully then be seized by the Romanian authorities as part of their case or HMRC as part of theirs.
Trump might be emboldened by Trudeau's resignation into thinking he can force other unfriendly leaders to step down.
He might be. He is that stupid. Trudeau is not stepping down because of Trump. He's stepping down because the Liberals are polling dreadfully, which is because they've been in power for a long time, including a period of high inflation.
Macron has reportedly intervened to urge Ukraine to be "realistic about territory".
This is singularly unhelpful and demonstrates that Macron has learnt nothing from the war since 2022. It is not Ukraine's desire to retain as much of itself as possible that blocks peace, but Russia's desire to seize the sovereign territory of another country.
There is, sadly, very little chance that the major European powers - Britain, France, or Germany - will step into the breach if Trump cuts support for Ukraine.
We are choosing a desperately dangerous future by acquiescing to Russian subjugation of a democracy. It doesn't have to be this way, but time is running out to change course.
The idea that government in those countries could fund and support a war in Ukraine against the wishes of the US without collapsing immediately is simply naive.
I don't think Trump is actively pro-Russia*. He's simply indifferent about the war. If European countries wanted to spend money on US armaments to send them to Ukraine I don't think he'd stand in the way.
* He greatly admires Putin as a strongman leader, but that's a slightly different thing.
Most of the US opposition to the Ukraine war is based on the cost of it, rather than taking one side or the other.
Not helped by the way they do military accounting such that sending some old obsolete weapons system “costs” the price of the new latest version the Americans are ordering for themselves, not helped by the comparative lack of aid given to domestic disaster relief, and from a political point of view the Biden family’s clear personal interest in Ukraine in recent years.
Most of the US opposition to the Ukraine war is based on the cost of it, rather than taking one side or the other? Really? It's not based on Trump hating Ukraine for not fabricating evidence on Biden, and Trump liking Putin's strong man approach to geopolitics? It's not based on MAGA buying all of Putin's lines about defending society/Christianity against woke nonsense/Muslims?
Comments
Tea always tastes better out of a pot. I don't know why. One bag will make enough tea for two cups if allowed to brew properly. I confess, for a long time I never bothered with the pot when it was just me I was making for. A shame, a missed opportunity.
One of the highlights of my working life was when my colleague answered her phone to a call from her son which turned out to be "Mum, where's the tea cosy?". There is a teenager who properly cares about tea. It made me feel more optimistic for the future of our country.
I suspect by now you will have made the tea and my input will be too late.
The redeveloped MCI is great as well. When I first went there a couple of years ago I actually thought my Uber had taken me to the wrong airport!
https://www.bbc.co.uk/news/articles/ckgxqnr8yw4o
Hubs sounds like Lord Darzi's obsession with polyclinics and private sector is classic Blairism, but somehow Wes Streeting is one of the great thinkers of our time.
Edit - this was a reply to @Sean_F .
Trudeau II tried something similar in Canada and the guy in Australia is trying something equally stupid there apparently with cross party support.
However, like the betting industry there is a simple solution, sites like this will have to move off shore and Trump's America might not be a bad place with Musk as an influencer.
What is it about the LEFT ? Mrs T was sadly so right, Socialists do not like choice because the people might not choose Socialism.
We know the Beeb have never forgiven the Tories for not giving them the second TV channel in 1956. We saw how Harold Wilson went for the Pirate Radio Ships and gave us "Wonderful Radio One". Curiously and I remember being surprised when, after 11 years of Thatcher Radio One suddenly smelt the coffee and became almost as good as Radio Caroline North had been 25 years earlier.
The fight is one between individualism and collectivism.
And, to quote my former Irish history tutor, this yea thing you’re doing is “neither clever nor funny”
Note I did not not say "stop"; I said "pause" for 1 week or 3 weeks - I think @Foxy said something similar.
I feel that PB BTL needs to calm down a bit, and I think it will do so. I'm not walking away quite so easily from a community I've been following for nearly 20 years; those who say this place is fairly unique are right.
It won't be long imho before more normal politics reasserts itself. It needs a bit of looking in the mirror for a couple of our parties who have still not worked out where they are going after last July, and what they intend to stand for, and Jan 20 to go past. It seems a good time for a break,
Personally, I have some new stuff needing starting up early this year (need some life back after various extended illness and family things). It is also that time of year where the iittle man with the bowler hat wants his information.
ATB.
(Repauses)
Wes Streeting thinks throwing money at it will solve the problems, no it won't. There is a perverse incentive to make patients wait if that means they can be forced to go private etc etc etc.
I still do not understand why we set up Nightingale Hospitals in Covid and then never used them.
Are you reading days and days of PB posts one by one in chronological order and have just caught up?
https://x.com/cobratate/status/1876244228202016899?s=61&t=LYVEHh2mqFy1oUJAdCfe-Q
Also change requires political capital to be spent. The only reasonable argument against means testing WFP is that the government should have picked its battles better, not that it was a bad thing to do, per se. I am doubtful even on that. WFP is a particularly egregious bung
https://www.gov.uk/government/news/britain-makes-internet-safer-as-online-safety-bill-finished-and-ready-to-become-law
https://researchbriefings.files.parliament.uk/documents/CBP-9579/CBP-9579.pdf
What I can't find is the list of MPs voting for - and against - the bill.
It is true PB has been very frenetic recently and some posters have left, but I remember the times when Johnson, Truss and Sunak were in office when similar periods occurred but we all benefit from a wide expression of views but frankly do not need the personal attacks which can be quite nasty
I would add we all need to be take care not to compromise @TSE snd the site owners and maybe exercise prudence
Ed Davey
@EdwardJDavey
People have had enough of Elon Musk interfering with our country’s democracy when he clearly knows nothing about Britain.
It’s time to summon the US ambassador to ask why an incoming US official is suggesting the UK government should be overthrown.
A "Student's Guide to the Presidency" says...
Although commissions can be created either by the president or by Congress, they are usually placed within the executive office. [...]
Although it is generally recognized that presidents have the power to establish commissions, they often seek congressional approval anyway. One reason for requesting congressional authorization to form a commission is that the funds required to operate and staff the commission are then specifically appropriated by Congress. Some presidential commissions, however, are created by an executive order of the president and are financed by emergency, executive, or special projects funds, which are appropriated by Congress to be spent at the president's discretion. President Herbert C. Hoover (1929–1933), who significantly expanded the use of presidential commissions by appointing 62 during his first sixteen months in office, reportedly raised at least $2 million in private funds to finance them.
Erm?? Really? I've had conversations over the years with my GP now and again along the lines of 'well, the local hospital has issued us with guidelines not to refer people with X unless the following tests are at Y" etc etc.
Hospitals love the gatekeeper system.
This is because their function was actually closer to the hospitals of Florence Nightingale than a modern hospital. A clean bed, indoors, with a toilet available.
They were not really for treatment - they were so that if scenes that happened in Northern Italy and a couple of cities in Spain, people would be dying in a decent bed, rather than in the street.
There was little medical equipment beyond some oxygen and ventilators. They would have been “staffed” by anyone they could find - including airplane cabin crew, who have to do a fair amount of first aid training.
They would have no use whatsoever in treating patients in normal times.
Not helped by the way they do military accounting such that sending some old obsolete weapons system “costs” the price of the new latest version the Americans are ordering for themselves, not helped by the comparative lack of aid given to domestic disaster relief, and from a political point of view the Biden family’s clear personal interest in Ukraine in recent years.
"Whenever you're ready."
I was ready, so off we flew.
The GOP are unprincipled pieces of shit.
But yes one assumes the VC boys and girls involved are doing it for the kudos of turning the government upside-down.
On the face of it, the sum total of what they’ve achieved is that
1) the university will need to consider the free speech aspect of the talk by an Uyghur
2) but not go ahead on the grounds that it would be distressing to Chinese irredentists. And therefore the live stream would be illegal…
This has been going on in common with Musk since Trump started to threaten Trudeau over tariffs, and calling him "the Governor of the State of Canada", about a month ago. Starner might have to get prepared for Musk's rhetoric to be linked to particular action.
The meeting is delayed but the two-minute notification has been issued
The opposition is based on the Republican right believing that Putin is the defender of white, Christian,civilisation.
It’s nice to be able to leave at 4:30 and arrive at 5 (latest) for a flight leaving at 5:50. Should even have time for a pint in the lounge before we go
Damn the lot of them, if it’s not yet illegal to say that.
NEW THREAD
I think there are some American politicians being vaguely isolationist in the US tradition, and some who really do believe Putin is their guy. The latter are dangerous. If they prevail, then at some stage we need to start seriously considering the prospect of the USA becoming a hostile actor.
They should have been prioritising the bad news for those things that raise serious amounts of money, but instead they’ve wasted the political capital on a bunch of minor things that not only raise little, but also annoy identifiable and organised groups of people.
Most qualifying pensioners were put off filing in the forms. Help was always available and I have done many of these forms on behalf of pensioners. An example of a beneficial outcome where money has gone to those for which it is intended.
Could the same be said about PPE contracts during the Covid years?
I don't tend to post a lot when off work - PB is mostly while I'm waiting for something to happen at work, e.g. when I'm running something that will take <10 minutes and needs half monitoring, I'll dip in. Also read a bit out of work, but rarely post much, normally busy with the family. So I'd read a bit over Christmas etc but probably not posted.
Re the like, I was idly wondering when I had posted last so was on that thread and came to the comment you replied to. The point about my tenuous connection to our turkey supplier was also well made - though we're on first name terms now and the turkey now has my name on its label, rather than my mother-in-law's as it was for the first few years!
I presume he's doing it as a grift. Set up a political party. Take people's subscriptions. Not many will be nuts enough to join a party led by Andrew Tate, but some will. Whatever money he gets will hopefully then be seized by the Romanian authorities as part of their case or HMRC as part of theirs.