On Dominic Cummings, as with the other mavericks running bits of the world at the moment, a good idea is to step back and ask slow and boring questions. Like this one:
In 2019 DC was appointed chief adviser and described as chief of staff to the prime minister of the UK. How well did he do in that role, and what are the permanent and beneficial fruits of his efforts to make the nation a better place? Illustrate your answer with at least six examples.
It's an interesting question to ask, but the answer from any of these lovely people would probably be something like: "My ideas were perfect. It's just that the idiots/traitors/system did not give me the opportunity/resources/power to implement them. It's all their fault, not my ideas!"
Witness a certain Liz Truss...
I follow Cummings on X, and to be honest he makes some good points about the flailing idiocy of the British state.
The problem is, is also a flailing idiot, and dangerously destructive to boot.
He's ferociously bright, but someone in love with ideas and really doesn't like people - who he thinks are what stands in the way of their proper execution.
I think he's the sort of person who might give a number of people he thinks are sympathetic to him a fair shot, initially, but vociferously condemn and dump them the very first time they do anything that he feels lets him down - which is inevitable with real people.
The trick is to try and design systems and processes and structures that get people doing the things you want naturally, without trying to control everything yourself. But that requires a depth of understanding and patience - and an aversion to control - that is almost guaranteed to be absent in anyone who has clawed their way up through politics into power. It’s also an approach that doesn’t lend itself to getting the payback of political credit from what you have actually done.
Cammo’s nudge unit was the closest we got to people seeing this, and it’s a shame that it didn’t seem to get anywhere
The nudge unit had quite a few victories, to the extent those responsible went off into the private sector, set up a consultancy firm and earn big bucks doing this for other governments and big business.
Its a bit like the big win on data processing during COVID, those responsible went back to private sector with no attempt to either kept them or replace them and repeat the process for a whole load of tasks across the public sector.
Two thoughts: -It is darkly funny to watch a senator essentially vote to abolish the formal power of Congress and then humbly petition the new emperor for amnesty. -I expect we’ll see more of this as people suddenly realize how dependent red states are on federal largesse.
The Chagos Deal. Actually, more I read into this Chagos stuff, more I’ve had “Edward Hyde” (from Cromwell film) switcheroo to other side.
epiphany from me is realising Mauritius leaders, dear Commonwealth Comrades, have “gamed” the UN system - not only for control over economically valuable territory they want to exploit themselves, fishing, oil and minerals, but their sponsors at UN, helping their argument get this far, are a gang of belligerent’s against UK like Putin’s Russia, doing so to make mischief and trouble for us. 😠
deal Foreign Office, Lammy and Starmer has created - to avoid a binding ruling against us at the UN - now appears to me to be bloody awful. It’s created a legal precedent that will be used by other states - no doubt backed in gaming the system by the same gang of UK enemies to try to make predatory claims on British territory elsewhere, where it’s impossible to argue now this precedent applies to Chagos, not to Cyprus or the Falklands. Even worse! the agreed deal grants duplicitous Mauritius leaders power to give fishing rights to Chinese spy vessels! Has Starmer and Lammy actually attended any top secret intelligence briefings themselves?
Consider me switched sides! Now how do we kill this deal? And how do we manage a UN “binding ruling”?
PS first link is pure Yes Minister. in order to sweeten first deal in 1960s, Labour bunged them £3M; although US rather silent partner, I’m sure UK got unofficial sweets back from US for our work. All later legal problems and rulings date back to Labour in the 1960s not getting local agreement to separate and depopulate. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Chagos_Archipelago_sovereignty_dispute
PPPS this link makes me think of Yes Minister again. Wasn’t premise “training for new ministers so Civil Service don’t run rings round them”? We’ve had a lot of churn on Ministers, Foreign Secs and PMs in recent years, recurring theme IMHO at first politicians buy in to the Foreign Office plan, as time passes, back away from it. “ministers intent on a tilt to the Indo-Pacific, it was felt British resistance to a handover was hampering UK’s ability to build alliances in the region” (India?) Don’t Cleverley’s words in this piece sound pure Sir Humphrey? https://www.theguardian.com/world/2022/nov/03/uk-agrees-to-negotiate-with-mauritius-over-handover-of-chagos-islands
Return Britain To Greatness doesn't really have the same catchiness as MAGA.
Patrick O'Flynn @oflynnsocial · 6h Anyone who thinks Reform would do a deal with Boris Johnson is either a lunatic or an idiot. The guy has the biggest immigration wave in British history - low-skilled and culturally non-aligned - named after him. He is OVER as a force in politics.
I think that's a false dichotomy.
They might be like, say, Cummings or Trump: a lunatic *and* an idiot.
Cummings has one skill, and only one skill, but it's why he's was hired by Johnson. He's a really effective project manager. He can marshall people and resources, bring focus and line everyone up behind a clear message, to deliver a result - whether it's Brexit or an election victory for Johnson.
He has no idea about policy, how to manage competing interests, or how to make anything work. Once he delivered the result and stopped being useful, Johnson sacked him.
IANAE on the Chagos Islands but the facts I have gleaned are that:
They once belonged to the French. We took them off the French in 1814 after Waterloo. For most of the 18th and 19th centuries we controlled them from Mauritius, a place that had no historical connection with them whatsoever. In the 1960s the Americans wanted a mid Indian Ocean base and chose Diego Garcia. In 1965 we, somewhat shamefully, kicked the remnants of the French, some African slaves and sundry others off the islands so the Americans could have that base without interference. Most of their descendants now live in the UK. At the same time we broke the administrative link between Mauritius and the Chagos islands. In 1968 Mauritius became independent of the UK. In 2021 the UN International Tribunal for the law of the Sea said that we should hand them back to Mauritius and that we had no sovereignty over them, despite controlling them since 1814. We are now trying to come to a "deal" by which we pay Mauritius money to take them off our hands without upsetting the Americans.
To describe the UN Tribunal decision as bizarre is to understate matters by several orders of magnitude. Mauritius never had any control of the Chagos when it was independent, either before we conquered it or at the time of their independence in 1968. If the UN is not going to recognise sovereignty after 210 years we are going to need a lot of new maps. The idea that we should pay anything to anybody for this is...words fail me.
Sounds like anybody with the experience won't work in Aberdeen unless they are paid big bucks.
Well you have to compensate for the extra tax you pay in Scotland for a start.
Are you sure they compensate the less well paid for paying more tax outside Scotland?
The failure to do so was very, very evident in the Tory Party attitude to dealing with the Armed Forces, inferior ranks of. As opposed to their supporters in the orficer class.
Cummings has one skill, and only one skill, but it's why he's was hired by Johnson. He's a really effective project manager. He can marshall people and resources, bring focus and line everyone up behind a clear message, to deliver a result - whether it's Brexit or an election victory for Johnson.
He has no idea about policy, how to manage competing interests, or how to make anything work. Once he delivered the result and stopped being useful, Johnson sacked him.
He also knows exactly how to use “fund our NHS” to whip up votes in whichever direction he wants. He’s done it in every single campaign he’s ever worked on & it’s been incredibly effective every time.
All the nonsense seems a world away but it never is however much we may wish it otherwise.
The existential struggle for survival between the Reformosaurus and the Conservadon will be one with which the popcorn sellers can fund THEIR trips to New Zealand but in the real world the two lumbering confused beasts will try to incapacitate each other but even if one lands a blow it’ll take an eternity for the other to understand what was happened.
The view from Mrs Stodge’s brother (big rugby fan) is the Irish are to be respected but the rest of the Northern Hemisphere rugby sides less so and the Saffers remain the team to beat.
As for Andrew Gwynne, we move a level further down the Orwellian rabbit hole. To be fair, Gwynne said some silly things and deserved to be booted out of Cabinet and the Labour Party if he has failed to meet their standards.
However, I’m uncomfortable with the notion of Mail journalists acting like the Ministry of Truth. It’s another example where it’s often those who purport to champion the right of freedom of expression who are most assiduous in closing down that right for their political opponents.
We often speak of the Right to Offend or the Right to be Offended but should that be denied to all public servants, just politicians, just Cabinet Ministers or just Labour Cabinet Ministers? The fact we can type what we think doesn’t invalidate our right to think, to be frustrated, to be angry, to even wish harm on others at our worst moments. It’s part of the mass of contradictions which make us human beings.
Final thought - reading up on the Japanese Prime Minister’s meeting with President Trump. I’d have expected every visit with every important foreign leader to be “wargamed”. You just don’t go into those kind of meetings without having done some form of preparation. I’m sure Starmer will do the same.
Reform UK has just passed 200,000 members. Remarkable given that mass party memberships were supposed to be a thing of the past.
Curious definition of "mass membership". Tory membership peaked at about three million, and Labour at one million plus six million trades unionists. And both when population was a good deal lower.
Not to say 200k isn't a good number for RefUK to post, but it's nowhere near "mass membership".
How accurate is that number anyway? I bet the website doesn’t go backwards when someone’s membership lapses.
Does Dom ever consider the idea that he might need to get someone to vote for him if he wants to do stuff?
I don’t think Dom and the Project 25 Gang believe in democracy and accountability. They see themselves as geniuses put on this earth to rule it. 🙁
To be fair, that’s common for almost anyone who gets to the centre of power and hangs about there for a while. It’s the principal saving grace of democracy, that it ensures any ruler is got rid of before they turn into Putin or Assad or somesuch
‘Many forms of Government have been tried, and will be tried in this world of sin and woe. No one pretends that democracy is perfect or all-wise. Indeed it has been said that democracy is the worst form of Government except for all those other forms that have been tried from time to time.…’ - W S Churchill, 1947.
Cummings has one skill, and only one skill, but it's why he's was hired by Johnson. He's a really effective project manager. He can marshall people and resources, bring focus and line everyone up behind a clear message, to deliver a result - whether it's Brexit or an election victory for Johnson.
He has no idea about policy, how to manage competing interests, or how to make anything work. Once he delivered the result and stopped being useful, Johnson sacked him.
He also knows exactly how to use “fund our NHS” to whip up votes in whichever direction he wants. He’s done it in every single campaign he’s ever worked on & it’s been incredibly effective every time.
Sure. Cummings knows what he needs to do to get a result. It's what he's good at. The other stuff, not so much.
I think Johnson is a pretty good judge of who's useful to him, and he sized up Cummings accurately.
I am not betraying confidences here but the feelers that have been put out about a Tory/Reform pact have moved onto who would be the figurehead for the new grouping escalated as they don't want to avoid the Alliance problem with the two Davids.
Quite a few people on both sides suggested Boris Johnson but Farage wants to lead the new alliance.
Clearly the Tories are in need of a pact. An alliance between the parties would need a clear name and a clear leader.
It’s pretty clear that the name will be “Reform UK” led by Nigel Farage…
Sounds like anybody with the experience won't work in Aberdeen unless they are paid big bucks.
Well you have to compensate for the extra tax you pay in Scotland for a start.
Are you sure they compensate the less well paid for paying more tax outside Scotland?
The failure to do so was very, very evident in the Tory Party attitude to dealing with the Armed Forces, inferior ranks of. As opposed to their supporters in the orficer class.
I don't think the post of head of GB Energy is going to qualify as less well paid. Just as consultants, investment managers, senior bankers, business owners, even successful lawyers don't. We are going to find it increasingly hard to attract any of the above when we insist on penalising them. As a path to growth this is somewhat sub optimal.
The Conservatives must work with Reform UK to avoid a wipeout at the local elections, two former Cabinet ministers have urged.
Sir Brandon Lewis and Esther McVey warned that Kemi Badenoch and Nigel Farage’s parties would not be able to defeat Labour unless they agreed to co-operate.
It comes as Reform surpassed 200,000 members on Sunday afternoon, meaning it has more than doubled its membership in less than three months.
May’s local elections are expected to prove difficult for the Conservatives because they were last held four years ago at the height of Boris Johnson’s post-pandemic popularity.
The Conservatives must work with Reform UK to avoid a wipeout at the local elections, two former Cabinet ministers have urged.
Sir Brandon Lewis and Esther McVey warned that Kemi Badenoch and Nigel Farage’s parties would not be able to defeat Labour unless they agreed to co-operate.
It comes as Reform surpassed 200,000 members on Sunday afternoon, meaning it has more than doubled its membership in less than three months.
May’s local elections are expected to prove difficult for the Conservatives because they were last held four years ago at the height of Boris Johnson’s post-pandemic popularity.
Return Britain To Greatness doesn't really have the same catchiness as MAGA.
Should have gone with MEGA, there will be a crossover with fans of English independence and they won't win many seats in Scotland regardless.
FPT
There is a clear hole in the political dialogue about EI that was not apparent pre-Brexit. Too much 'noise' as each side ripped themselves apart. It's being supressed but like immigration, it could develop a life of its own.
IANAE on the Chagos Islands but the facts I have gleaned are that:
They once belonged to the French. We took them off the French in 1814 after Waterloo. For most of the 18th and 19th centuries we controlled them from Mauritius, a place that had no historical connection with them whatsoever. In the 1960s the Americans wanted a mid Indian Ocean base and chose Diego Garcia. In 1965 we, somewhat shamefully, kicked the remnants of the French, some African slaves and sundry others off the islands so the Americans could have that base without interference. Most of their descendants now live in the UK. At the same time we broke the administrative link between Mauritius and the Chagos islands. In 1968 Mauritius became independent of the UK. In 2021 the UN International Tribunal for the law of the Sea said that we should hand them back to Mauritius and that we had no sovereignty over them, despite controlling them since 1814. We are now trying to come to a "deal" by which we pay Mauritius money to take them off our hands without upsetting the Americans.
To describe the UN Tribunal decision as bizarre is to understate matters by several orders of magnitude. Mauritius never had any control of the Chagos when it was independent, either before we conquered it or at the time of their independence in 1968. If the UN is not going to recognise sovereignty after 210 years we are going to need a lot of new maps. The idea that we should pay anything to anybody for this is...words fail me.
The only real surprise, here, is that the UN is still perceived as a pure neutral arbiter.
TBF, he's been saying that for a while. He's really not a fan of the "living instrument" thing.
Well, that's because he is a lawyer and lawyers really don't like things that are statutes or Conventions whose meaning is open to courts to determine over time. Its fundamentally undemocratic. Its equally bad when the likes of Clarence Thomas pretends to "interpret" older texts to fit whatever people have paid him to believe at that moment, of course.
Both of them seriously overplay the proper role and duties of judges.
Except that lots of lawyers do like it, otherwise the "living instrument" bollocks would never have happened...
IANAE on the Chagos Islands but the facts I have gleaned are that:
They once belonged to the French. We took them off the French in 1814 after Waterloo. For most of the 18th and 19th centuries we controlled them from Mauritius, a place that had no historical connection with them whatsoever. In the 1960s the Americans wanted a mid Indian Ocean base and chose Diego Garcia. In 1965 we, somewhat shamefully, kicked the remnants of the French, some African slaves and sundry others off the islands so the Americans could have that base without interference. Most of their descendants now live in the UK. At the same time we broke the administrative link between Mauritius and the Chagos islands. In 1968 Mauritius became independent of the UK. In 2021 the UN International Tribunal for the law of the Sea said that we should hand them back to Mauritius and that we had no sovereignty over them, despite controlling them since 1814. We are now trying to come to a "deal" by which we pay Mauritius money to take them off our hands without upsetting the Americans.
To describe the UN Tribunal decision as bizarre is to understate matters by several orders of magnitude. Mauritius never had any control of the Chagos when it was independent, either before we conquered it or at the time of their independence in 1968. If the UN is not going to recognise sovereignty after 210 years we are going to need a lot of new maps. The idea that we should pay anything to anybody for this is...words fail me.
Yes and while it’s hardly the biggest foreign policy blunder since Munich or Suez, it was a long running issue which needed resolution and, as you say, our part in the forced displacement (Gaza anyone?) of the Chagossians was a matter we can’t ignore.
Here in New Zealand, the consequences of British actions continue to reverberate with the furore over the Treaty Principles Bill though the often espoused notion the Māori lived in harmony before the Europeans arrived is just a load of feijoas. Being hit on the head with a pounamu axe or being shot in the head have the same effect.
The disrespect the miners who were only interested in gold and profit showed the Māori was awful - the marae were forcibly uprooted and thrown out of areas near the sea with grave sites desecrated simply in the name of greed and it showed, as it always has, that capitalism brings out both the best and worst in people.
As an aside, I visited Blackball yesterday where the New Zealand Labour Party was founded and topped up my revolutionary socialist credentials. Have a read about the Pike River Mine disaster of 2010 if you want to see neo-liberalism in all its glory.
The Conservatives must work with Reform UK to avoid a wipeout at the local elections, two former Cabinet ministers have urged.
Sir Brandon Lewis and Esther McVey warned that Kemi Badenoch and Nigel Farage’s parties would not be able to defeat Labour unless they agreed to co-operate.
It comes as Reform surpassed 200,000 members on Sunday afternoon, meaning it has more than doubled its membership in less than three months.
May’s local elections are expected to prove difficult for the Conservatives because they were last held four years ago at the height of Boris Johnson’s post-pandemic popularity.
There’s little sign that the administration, or its scofflaw minions, are aware of any of this.
It seems few people know what an “indirect cost” is or why it has to be 40-60%.
The reason the government forced universities to raise their indirect costs up to (typically) 40-60% was to force a huge amount of regulations on the universities while also minimizing the bookkeeping to comply with those regulations. This includes the work by contract managers, compliance lawyers, accountants, safety management, etc., who are required by the government per the terms of the contract. If universities had to allocate all those categories of labor to each contract hour-by-hour it would require too much bookkeeping, which would waste money. (I’m setting aside for now the question of whether or how much the regulations are wasting money and only discussing how you bookkeep the effort to comply with the regulations.)
So to save money, while also requiring universities to do these types of work, the government requires universities to roll those categories of labor into “cost pools” that must be allocated as a percent of the technical work in each of the contracts. While the actual “overhead” might be only 15%, these pooled labor charges that are required by the government are typically much more.
So if the government wants to reduce the indirect rate to 15%, then it needs to do one of these two things:
Either
(A) eliminate all the federal regulations that force the universities to do those categories of work (compliance, accounting, management, safety management, tracking harmful chemicals, etc.)
Or,
(B) stop requiring universities to pool those real costs into the “indirect cost” category and allow universities to include them in the “direct costs” of the contract… https://x.com/DrPhiltill/status/1888274463562604808
The Conservatives must work with Reform UK to avoid a wipeout at the local elections, two former Cabinet ministers have urged.
Sir Brandon Lewis and Esther McVey warned that Kemi Badenoch and Nigel Farage’s parties would not be able to defeat Labour unless they agreed to co-operate.
It comes as Reform surpassed 200,000 members on Sunday afternoon, meaning it has more than doubled its membership in less than three months.
May’s local elections are expected to prove difficult for the Conservatives because they were last held four years ago at the height of Boris Johnson’s post-pandemic popularity.
Sounds like anybody with the experience won't work in Aberdeen unless they are paid big bucks.
Well you have to compensate for the extra tax you pay in Scotland for a start.
And the smell of fish. And the shortened life due to excessive buttery consumption.
Though butteries are really quite nice.
Didn’t seem an impediment to all those high, wide and handsome Texan big spenders who were a feature of my upbringing, not to mention that Nostradamus of the future of UK(sic) oil, Sir Ian Wood. I’m sure his tax arrangements are ultra efficient, mind.
You'd love it if I actually called you; you'd get the attention you crave and need.
Interestingly, given your Scott and Pasting of yourself repeatedly here with the same text in response to every post I make, I've had something of a revelation: you are just a tedious repetitive relentless and angry person, in general.
If it hadn't been Brexit over the last 9 years, it'd have been something else - you'd have found something, or maybe two things - and you'd have been the exactly the same.
Realising this has made me feel pity for you, and a level of human empathy for your condition, so I will leave you to nurse yourself and indulge your obsessions as you must.
You'd love it if I actually called you; you'd get the attention you crave and need.
Interestingly, given your Scott and Pasting of yourself repeatedly here with the same text in response to every post I make, I've had something of a revelation: you are just a tedious repetitive relentless and angry person, in general.
If it hadn't been Brexit over the last 9 years, it'd have been something else - you'd have found something, or maybe two things - and you'd have been the exactly the same.
Realising this has made me feel pity for you, and a level of human empathy for your condition, so I will leave you to nurse yourself and indulge your obsessions as you must.
Watched 20 mins of Kemi interview....often given time, can change your opinion about them as they are given time and space to explain their thoughts, that you never get from the 5 minute interruptathon from MSM. But she is absolutely clueless in combination with weird delusion of how many amazing things she has done.
I don’t know what proportion of our electorates this is true about, but it’s a number that’s likely to fall considerably during 2025.
I don’t think a lot of people appreciate how much of their overall lifestyle and relative certainty is backstopped by a steady, boring stability of systems they don’t understand or even realize exist. https://x.com/jasonc_nc/status/1888213714991546646
Why do you keep doing it then? It's creepy. Get a life
I literally said this yesterday about you: "You are the world's most fucking boring man."
You are a Greek Tragedy of a case but one that is occasionally beautifully analogous.
One you seem obsessed with. Seriously, Casino, it’s not a good look.
Er, no. Not in the slightest.
The true obsessive here is Scott, with Brexit.
That's the real issue here, the "not a good look" and the one who really needs to "Get A Life".
You’re becoming seriously boring with this.
Firstly, no, I'm not - that's Scott - and, secondly, your abject failure to see this and your one-sided engagement on this issue just shows your horrendous bias.
It can be explained simply by the fact you don't like Brexit and want to defend one of your own.
IANAE on the Chagos Islands but the facts I have gleaned are that:
They once belonged to the French. We took them off the French in 1814 after Waterloo. For most of the 18th and 19th centuries we controlled them from Mauritius, a place that had no historical connection with them whatsoever. In the 1960s the Americans wanted a mid Indian Ocean base and chose Diego Garcia. In 1965 we, somewhat shamefully, kicked the remnants of the French, some African slaves and sundry others off the islands so the Americans could have that base without interference. Most of their descendants now live in the UK. At the same time we broke the administrative link between Mauritius and the Chagos islands. In 1968 Mauritius became independent of the UK. In 2021 the UN International Tribunal for the law of the Sea said that we should hand them back to Mauritius and that we had no sovereignty over them, despite controlling them since 1814. We are now trying to come to a "deal" by which we pay Mauritius money to take them off our hands without upsetting the Americans.
To describe the UN Tribunal decision as bizarre is to understate matters by several orders of magnitude. Mauritius never had any control of the Chagos when it was independent, either before we conquered it or at the time of their independence in 1968. If the UN is not going to recognise sovereignty after 210 years we are going to need a lot of new maps. The idea that we should pay anything to anybody for this is...words fail me.
The only real surprise, here, is that the UN is still perceived as a pure neutral arbiter.
It's about as clean as FIFA.
It never really has been. It’s arguably a failure of western diplomacy that the numbers have shifted so much against us.
Watched 20 mins of Kemi interview....often given time, can change your opinion about them as they are given time and space to explain their thoughts, that you never get from the 5 minute interruptathon from MSM. But she is absolutely clueless in combination with weird delusion of how many amazing things she has done.
IANAE on the Chagos Islands but the facts I have gleaned are that:
They once belonged to the French. We took them off the French in 1814 after Waterloo. For most of the 18th and 19th centuries we controlled them from Mauritius, a place that had no historical connection with them whatsoever. In the 1960s the Americans wanted a mid Indian Ocean base and chose Diego Garcia. In 1965 we, somewhat shamefully, kicked the remnants of the French, some African slaves and sundry others off the islands so the Americans could have that base without interference. Most of their descendants now live in the UK. At the same time we broke the administrative link between Mauritius and the Chagos islands. In 1968 Mauritius became independent of the UK. In 2021 the UN International Tribunal for the law of the Sea said that we should hand them back to Mauritius and that we had no sovereignty over them, despite controlling them since 1814. We are now trying to come to a "deal" by which we pay Mauritius money to take them off our hands without upsetting the Americans.
To describe the UN Tribunal decision as bizarre is to understate matters by several orders of magnitude. Mauritius never had any control of the Chagos when it was independent, either before we conquered it or at the time of their independence in 1968. If the UN is not going to recognise sovereignty after 210 years we are going to need a lot of new maps. The idea that we should pay anything to anybody for this is...words fail me.
The only real surprise, here, is that the UN is still perceived as a pure neutral arbiter.
It's about as clean as FIFA.
It never really has been. It’s arguably a failure of western diplomacy that the numbers have shifted so much against us.
That, and fading western geopolitical and economic power, generally.
Watched 20 mins of Kemi interview....often given time, can change your opinion about them as they are given time and space to explain their thoughts, that you never get from the 5 minute interruptathon from MSM. But she is absolutely clueless in combination with weird delusion of how many amazing things she has done.
The Conservatives must work with Reform UK to avoid a wipeout at the local elections, two former Cabinet ministers have urged.
Sir Brandon Lewis and Esther McVey warned that Kemi Badenoch and Nigel Farage’s parties would not be able to defeat Labour unless they agreed to co-operate.
It comes as Reform surpassed 200,000 members on Sunday afternoon, meaning it has more than doubled its membership in less than three months.
May’s local elections are expected to prove difficult for the Conservatives because they were last held four years ago at the height of Boris Johnson’s post-pandemic popularity.
Sounds like anybody with the experience won't work in Aberdeen unless they are paid big bucks.
Well you have to compensate for the extra tax you pay in Scotland for a start.
And the smell of fish. And the shortened life due to excessive buttery consumption.
Though butteries are really quite nice.
Mildly interesting fact, Aberdeen butteries, the city's take on croissants, aren't in fact called butteries in Aberdeen.
Aberdeen is a fine city by the way, despite being definitively the coldest place on earth.
As well as the rowies, I like it when there's a cool easterly wind off the sea - the ghostly grey buildings in the haar.
In January 2020, it was, surprisingly, mild enough to visit Dunnottar, Stonehaven, the Don Estuary, and Inverurie.
We used to have seaside holidays in an old wooden hut on the beach when I was a bairn, on the East Coast albeit rather further south. An English friend came up for a few days one Easter one year and has never stopped talking about the cold - more than 50 years on - whereas I only recall it being a bit windy one day with the sand blasting our bare legs.
Cummings has one skill, and only one skill, but it's why he's was hired by Johnson. He's a really effective project manager. He can marshall people and resources, bring focus and line everyone up behind a clear message, to deliver a result - whether it's Brexit or an election victory for Johnson.
He has no idea about policy, how to manage competing interests, or how to make anything work. Once he delivered the result and stopped being useful, Johnson sacked him.
That's campaigning, surely, rather than project management?
Every time he's actually tried marshalling 'people and resources' to manage an actual project to deliver an administrative rather than political outcome it's been shambolic.
IANAE on the Chagos Islands but the facts I have gleaned are that:
They once belonged to the French. We took them off the French in 1814 after Waterloo. For most of the 18th and 19th centuries we controlled them from Mauritius, a place that had no historical connection with them whatsoever. In the 1960s the Americans wanted a mid Indian Ocean base and chose Diego Garcia. In 1965 we, somewhat shamefully, kicked the remnants of the French, some African slaves and sundry others off the islands so the Americans could have that base without interference. Most of their descendants now live in the UK. At the same time we broke the administrative link between Mauritius and the Chagos islands. In 1968 Mauritius became independent of the UK. In 2021 the UN International Tribunal for the law of the Sea said that we should hand them back to Mauritius and that we had no sovereignty over them, despite controlling them since 1814. We are now trying to come to a "deal" by which we pay Mauritius money to take them off our hands without upsetting the Americans.
To describe the UN Tribunal decision as bizarre is to understate matters by several orders of magnitude. Mauritius never had any control of the Chagos when it was independent, either before we conquered it or at the time of their independence in 1968. If the UN is not going to recognise sovereignty after 210 years we are going to need a lot of new maps. The idea that we should pay anything to anybody for this is...words fail me.
The only real surprise, here, is that the UN is still perceived as a pure neutral arbiter.
The Conservatives must work with Reform UK to avoid a wipeout at the local elections, two former Cabinet ministers have urged.
Sir Brandon Lewis and Esther McVey warned that Kemi Badenoch and Nigel Farage’s parties would not be able to defeat Labour unless they agreed to co-operate.
It comes as Reform surpassed 200,000 members on Sunday afternoon, meaning it has more than doubled its membership in less than three months.
May’s local elections are expected to prove difficult for the Conservatives because they were last held four years ago at the height of Boris Johnson’s post-pandemic popularity.
Cummings has one skill, and only one skill, but it's why he's was hired by Johnson. He's a really effective project manager. He can marshall people and resources, bring focus and line everyone up behind a clear message, to deliver a result - whether it's Brexit or an election victory for Johnson.
He has no idea about policy, how to manage competing interests, or how to make anything work. Once he delivered the result and stopped being useful, Johnson sacked him.
That's campaigning, surely, rather than project management?
Every time he's actually tried marshalling 'people and resources' to manage an actual project to deliver an administrative rather than political outcome it's been shambolic.
But at sloganising he has few peers.
Being good at project management to deliver a result doesn't exclude the consequences being shambolic. That's happened on every one of Cummings' projects. I would include removing schools from state management as one such project.
The Conservatives must work with Reform UK to avoid a wipeout at the local elections, two former Cabinet ministers have urged.
Sir Brandon Lewis and Esther McVey warned that Kemi Badenoch and Nigel Farage’s parties would not be able to defeat Labour unless they agreed to co-operate.
It comes as Reform surpassed 200,000 members on Sunday afternoon, meaning it has more than doubled its membership in less than three months.
May’s local elections are expected to prove difficult for the Conservatives because they were last held four years ago at the height of Boris Johnson’s post-pandemic popularity.
Why do you keep doing it then? It's creepy. Get a life
I literally said this yesterday about you: "You are the world's most fucking boring man."
You are a Greek Tragedy of a case but one that is occasionally beautifully analogous.
One you seem obsessed with. Seriously, Casino, it’s not a good look.
Er, no. Not in the slightest.
The true obsessive here is Scott, with Brexit.
That's the real issue here, the "not a good look" and the one who really needs to "Get A Life".
You’re becoming seriously boring with this.
Firstly, no, I'm not - that's Scott - and, secondly, your abject failure to see this and your one-sided engagement on this issue just shows your horrendous bias.
It can be explained simply by the fact you don't like Brexit and want to defend one of your own.
This is becoming as tedious as a Radiohead album.
If neither of you have anything nice to say to each other then don't say anything.
Don't make me deploy the Farage photo, in fact I might change and lock both your profile pics to that photo.
The Conservatives must work with Reform UK to avoid a wipeout at the local elections, two former Cabinet ministers have urged.
Sir Brandon Lewis and Esther McVey warned that Kemi Badenoch and Nigel Farage’s parties would not be able to defeat Labour unless they agreed to co-operate.
It comes as Reform surpassed 200,000 members on Sunday afternoon, meaning it has more than doubled its membership in less than three months.
May’s local elections are expected to prove difficult for the Conservatives because they were last held four years ago at the height of Boris Johnson’s post-pandemic popularity.
The Conservatives must work with Reform UK to avoid a wipeout at the local elections, two former Cabinet ministers have urged.
Sir Brandon Lewis and Esther McVey warned that Kemi Badenoch and Nigel Farage’s parties would not be able to defeat Labour unless they agreed to co-operate.
It comes as Reform surpassed 200,000 members on Sunday afternoon, meaning it has more than doubled its membership in less than three months.
May’s local elections are expected to prove difficult for the Conservatives because they were last held four years ago at the height of Boris Johnson’s post-pandemic popularity.
The Conservatives must work with Reform UK to avoid a wipeout at the local elections, two former Cabinet ministers have urged.
Sir Brandon Lewis and Esther McVey warned that Kemi Badenoch and Nigel Farage’s parties would not be able to defeat Labour unless they agreed to co-operate.
It comes as Reform surpassed 200,000 members on Sunday afternoon, meaning it has more than doubled its membership in less than three months.
May’s local elections are expected to prove difficult for the Conservatives because they were last held four years ago at the height of Boris Johnson’s post-pandemic popularity.
The Conservatives must work with Reform UK to avoid a wipeout at the local elections, two former Cabinet ministers have urged.
Sir Brandon Lewis and Esther McVey warned that Kemi Badenoch and Nigel Farage’s parties would not be able to defeat Labour unless they agreed to co-operate.
It comes as Reform surpassed 200,000 members on Sunday afternoon, meaning it has more than doubled its membership in less than three months.
May’s local elections are expected to prove difficult for the Conservatives because they were last held four years ago at the height of Boris Johnson’s post-pandemic popularity.
IANAE on the Chagos Islands but the facts I have gleaned are that:
They once belonged to the French. We took them off the French in 1814 after Waterloo. For most of the 18th and 19th centuries we controlled them from Mauritius, a place that had no historical connection with them whatsoever. In the 1960s the Americans wanted a mid Indian Ocean base and chose Diego Garcia. In 1965 we, somewhat shamefully, kicked the remnants of the French, some African slaves and sundry others off the islands so the Americans could have that base without interference. Most of their descendants now live in the UK. At the same time we broke the administrative link between Mauritius and the Chagos islands. In 1968 Mauritius became independent of the UK. In 2021 the UN International Tribunal for the law of the Sea said that we should hand them back to Mauritius and that we had no sovereignty over them, despite controlling them since 1814. We are now trying to come to a "deal" by which we pay Mauritius money to take them off our hands without upsetting the Americans.
To describe the UN Tribunal decision as bizarre is to understate matters by several orders of magnitude. Mauritius never had any control of the Chagos when it was independent, either before we conquered it or at the time of their independence in 1968. If the UN is not going to recognise sovereignty after 210 years we are going to need a lot of new maps. The idea that we should pay anything to anybody for this is...words fail me.
Surely ITLOS were just following the 2019 ICJ opinion that Mauritius should have sovereignty. It's not about the length of British rule, it's about the legality of dividing a Non-Self-Governing Territory just before independence, and the circumstances in which that happened in the case of the Chagos Islands. The court's opinion was that the way Britain split the Chagos Islands from Mauritius in 1965 was not legal. It's a perfectly understandable decision in the circumstances. You may disagree with it, but it is hardly bizarre.
The Conservatives must work with Reform UK to avoid a wipeout at the local elections, two former Cabinet ministers have urged.
Sir Brandon Lewis and Esther McVey warned that Kemi Badenoch and Nigel Farage’s parties would not be able to defeat Labour unless they agreed to co-operate.
It comes as Reform surpassed 200,000 members on Sunday afternoon, meaning it has more than doubled its membership in less than three months.
May’s local elections are expected to prove difficult for the Conservatives because they were last held four years ago at the height of Boris Johnson’s post-pandemic popularity.
Why do you keep doing it then? It's creepy. Get a life
I literally said this yesterday about you: "You are the world's most fucking boring man."
You are a Greek Tragedy of a case but one that is occasionally beautifully analogous.
One you seem obsessed with. Seriously, Casino, it’s not a good look.
Er, no. Not in the slightest.
The true obsessive here is Scott, with Brexit.
That's the real issue here, the "not a good look" and the one who really needs to "Get A Life".
You’re becoming seriously boring with this.
Firstly, no, I'm not - that's Scott - and, secondly, your abject failure to see this and your one-sided engagement on this issue just shows your horrendous bias.
It can be explained simply by the fact you don't like Brexit and want to defend one of your own.
This is becoming as tedious as a Radiohead album.
If neither of you have anything nice to say to each other then don't say anything.
Don't make me deploy the Farage photo, in fact I might change and lock both your profile pics to that photo.
The Chagos Deal. Actually, more I read into this Chagos stuff, more I’ve had “Edward Hyde” (from Cromwell film) switcheroo to other side.
epiphany from me is realising Mauritius leaders, dear Commonwealth Comrades, have “gamed” the UN system - not only for control over economically valuable territory they want to exploit themselves, fishing, oil and minerals, but their sponsors at UN, helping their argument get this far, are a gang of belligerent’s against UK like Putin’s Russia, doing so to make mischief and trouble for us. 😠
deal Foreign Office, Lammy and Starmer has created - to avoid a binding ruling against us at the UN - now appears to me to be bloody awful. It’s created a legal precedent that will be used by other states - no doubt backed in gaming the system by the same gang of UK enemies to try to make predatory claims on British territory elsewhere, where it’s impossible to argue now this precedent applies to Chagos, not to Cyprus or the Falklands. Even worse! the agreed deal grants duplicitous Mauritius leaders power to give fishing rights to Chinese spy vessels! Has Starmer and Lammy actually attended any top secret intelligence briefings themselves?
Consider me switched sides! Now how do we kill this deal? And how do we manage a UN “binding ruling”?
PS first link is pure Yes Minister. in order to sweeten first deal in 1960s, Labour bunged them £3M; although US rather silent partner, I’m sure UK got unofficial sweets back from US for our work. All later legal problems and rulings date back to Labour in the 1960s not getting local agreement to separate and depopulate. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Chagos_Archipelago_sovereignty_dispute
PPPS this link makes me think of Yes Minister again. Wasn’t premise “training for new ministers so Civil Service don’t run rings round them”? We’ve had a lot of churn on Ministers, Foreign Secs and PMs in recent years, recurring theme IMHO at first politicians buy in to the Foreign Office plan, as time passes, back away from it. “ministers intent on a tilt to the Indo-Pacific, it was felt British resistance to a handover was hampering UK’s ability to build alliances in the region” (India?) Don’t Cleverley’s words in this piece sound pure Sir Humphrey? https://www.theguardian.com/world/2022/nov/03/uk-agrees-to-negotiate-with-mauritius-over-handover-of-chagos-islands
It's always interesting when someone changes their mind.
IANAE on the Chagos Islands but the facts I have gleaned are that:
They once belonged to the French. We took them off the French in 1814 after Waterloo. For most of the 18th and 19th centuries we controlled them from Mauritius, a place that had no historical connection with them whatsoever. In the 1960s the Americans wanted a mid Indian Ocean base and chose Diego Garcia. In 1965 we, somewhat shamefully, kicked the remnants of the French, some African slaves and sundry others off the islands so the Americans could have that base without interference. Most of their descendants now live in the UK. At the same time we broke the administrative link between Mauritius and the Chagos islands. In 1968 Mauritius became independent of the UK. In 2021 the UN International Tribunal for the law of the Sea said that we should hand them back to Mauritius and that we had no sovereignty over them, despite controlling them since 1814. We are now trying to come to a "deal" by which we pay Mauritius money to take them off our hands without upsetting the Americans.
To describe the UN Tribunal decision as bizarre is to understate matters by several orders of magnitude. Mauritius never had any control of the Chagos when it was independent, either before we conquered it or at the time of their independence in 1968. If the UN is not going to recognise sovereignty after 210 years we are going to need a lot of new maps. The idea that we should pay anything to anybody for this is...words fail me.
Yes and while it’s hardly the biggest foreign policy blunder since Munich or Suez, it was a long running issue which needed resolution and, as you say, our part in the forced displacement (Gaza anyone?) of the Chagossians was a matter we can’t ignore.
Here in New Zealand, the consequences of British actions continue to reverberate with the furore over the Treaty Principles Bill though the often espoused notion the Māori lived in harmony before the Europeans arrived is just a load of feijoas. Being hit on the head with a pounamu axe or being shot in the head have the same effect.
The disrespect the miners who were only interested in gold and profit showed the Māori was awful - the marae were forcibly uprooted and thrown out of areas near the sea with grave sites desecrated simply in the name of greed and it showed, as it always has, that capitalism brings out both the best and worst in people.
As an aside, I visited Blackball yesterday where the New Zealand Labour Party was founded and topped up my revolutionary socialist credentials. Have a read about the Pike River Mine disaster of 2010 if you want to see neo-liberalism in all its glory.
I stayed in the Blackball Hilton years ago. Interesting old place.
Musk is now calling for the end of Radio Free Europe (“decide yourself if Radio’s gonna stay”) and Voice of America.
If our government and the Beeb had any sense of strategic opportunity then surely this would be it. What Musk is threatening is to leave the market for Anglophone soft power radio - which remains a market of hundreds of millions, potentially billions of listeners - completely open to monopoly by the BBC world service.
What’s needed now is a “way out” for the large numbers of decent, ordinary well-meaning folk who got caught up in the radicalised madness of 2020. They need a way to save face, and keep their jobs. Confronting them with the uncomfortable fact that they committed themselves and their organisations to an inherently authoritarian, anti-human, anti-progressive ideology that was sponsored and fanned by various three letter agencies and the dark forces of global capitalism isn’t going to be the way to do it. They’ll only double down. Human beings are, amongst many other things, generally stubborn and egotistical and they can’t stand to be proven wrong."
Comments
Its a bit like the big win on data processing during COVID, those responsible went back to private sector with no attempt to either kept them or replace them and repeat the process for a whole load of tasks across the public sector.
@citizencohn.bsky.social
Impact of NIH cut starting to sink in
Here's Sen. Katie Britt urging "a smart, targeted approach" in order to protect important research at UA-Birmingham, a top NIH recipient
Also, as article notes, the state's largest employer
https://bsky.app/profile/citizencohn.bsky.social/post/3lhqw4pd25c2w
@resnikoff.bsky.social
Two thoughts:
-It is darkly funny to watch a senator essentially vote to abolish the formal power of Congress and then humbly petition the new emperor for amnesty.
-I expect we’ll see more of this as people suddenly realize how dependent red states are on federal largesse.
https://www.theguardian.com/business/2025/feb/09/gb-energy-recruitment-ceo-aberdeen-hq
Sounds like anybody with the experience won't work in Aberdeen unless they are paid big bucks.
They might be like, say, Cummings or Trump: a lunatic *and* an idiot.
Sorry.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=LssEXqQ4HCw
He has no idea about policy, how to manage competing interests, or how to make anything work. Once he delivered the result and stopped being useful, Johnson sacked him.
You are a Greek Tragedy of a case but one that is occasionally beautifully analogous.
Get a life
Creep
They once belonged to the French. We took them off the French in 1814 after Waterloo.
For most of the 18th and 19th centuries we controlled them from Mauritius, a place that had no historical connection with them whatsoever.
In the 1960s the Americans wanted a mid Indian Ocean base and chose Diego Garcia.
In 1965 we, somewhat shamefully, kicked the remnants of the French, some African slaves and sundry others off the islands so the Americans could have that base without interference.
Most of their descendants now live in the UK.
At the same time we broke the administrative link between Mauritius and the Chagos islands.
In 1968 Mauritius became independent of the UK.
In 2021 the UN International Tribunal for the law of the Sea said that we should hand them back to Mauritius and that we had no sovereignty over them, despite controlling them since 1814.
We are now trying to come to a "deal" by which we pay Mauritius money to take them off our hands without upsetting the Americans.
To describe the UN Tribunal decision as bizarre is to understate matters by several orders of magnitude.
Mauritius never had any control of the Chagos when it was independent, either before we conquered it or at the time of their independence in 1968. If the UN is not going to recognise sovereignty after 210 years we are going to need a lot of new maps. The idea that we should pay anything to anybody for this is...words fail me.
The failure to do so was very, very evident in the Tory Party attitude to dealing with the Armed Forces, inferior ranks of. As opposed to their supporters in the orficer class.
No one owes “Brexit” any allegiance. Farage couldn’t even be arsed to describe what it really was before the vote.
The country voted for it; we’ve left. That is all the allegiance it was owed, and it’s done.
Seriously, Casino, it’s not a good look.
All the nonsense seems a world away but it never is however much we may wish it otherwise.
The existential struggle for survival between the Reformosaurus and the Conservadon will be one with which the popcorn sellers can fund THEIR trips to New Zealand but in the real world the two lumbering confused beasts will try to incapacitate each other but even if one lands a blow it’ll take an eternity for the other to understand what was happened.
The view from Mrs Stodge’s brother (big rugby fan) is the Irish are to be respected but the rest of the Northern Hemisphere rugby sides less so and the Saffers remain the team to beat.
As for Andrew Gwynne, we move a level further down the Orwellian rabbit hole. To be fair, Gwynne said some silly things and deserved to be booted out of Cabinet and the Labour Party if he has failed to meet their standards.
However, I’m uncomfortable with the notion of Mail journalists acting like the Ministry of Truth. It’s another example where it’s often those who purport to champion the right of freedom of expression who are most assiduous in closing down that right for their political opponents.
We often speak of the Right to Offend or the Right to be Offended but should that be denied to all public servants, just politicians, just Cabinet Ministers or just Labour Cabinet Ministers? The fact we can type what we think doesn’t invalidate our right to think, to be frustrated, to be angry, to even wish harm on others at our worst moments. It’s part of the mass of contradictions which make us human beings.
Final thought - reading up on the Japanese Prime Minister’s meeting with President Trump. I’d have expected every visit with every important foreign leader to be “wargamed”. You just don’t go into those kind of meetings without having done some form of preparation. I’m sure Starmer will do the same.
‘Many forms of Government have been tried, and will be tried in this world of sin and woe. No one pretends that democracy is perfect or all-wise. Indeed it has been said that democracy is the worst form of Government except for all those other forms that have been tried from time to time.…’
- W S Churchill, 1947.
I think Johnson is a pretty good judge of who's useful to him, and he sized up Cummings accurately.
It’s pretty clear that the name will be “Reform UK” led by Nigel Farage…
Sir Brandon Lewis and Esther McVey warned that Kemi Badenoch and Nigel Farage’s parties would not be able to defeat Labour unless they agreed to co-operate.
It comes as Reform surpassed 200,000 members on Sunday afternoon, meaning it has more than doubled its membership in less than three months.
May’s local elections are expected to prove difficult for the Conservatives because they were last held four years ago at the height of Boris Johnson’s post-pandemic popularity.
https://www.telegraph.co.uk/politics/2025/02/09/conservatives-reform-nigel-farage-scotland-local-elections/
Ed Millstone now says that that was what they meant
I'll promise not to mention you ever again when you promise not to mention Brexit in every post you make every day.
How about that?
Shame that the name "Tory Reform Group" is already taken.
The true obsessive here is Scott, with Brexit.
That's the real issue here, the "not a good look" and the one who really needs to "Get A Life".
There is a clear hole in the political dialogue about EI that was not apparent pre-Brexit. Too much 'noise' as each side ripped themselves apart. It's being supressed but like immigration, it could develop a life of its own.
I've got enough money to pay all the way.
Isn't Scott here just for us to laugh at, like Steve Bray?
Get a life
Though butteries are really quite nice.
It's about as clean as FIFA.
Here in New Zealand, the consequences of British actions continue to reverberate with the furore over the Treaty Principles Bill though the often espoused notion the Māori lived in harmony before the Europeans arrived is just a load of feijoas. Being hit on the head with a pounamu axe or being shot in the head have the same effect.
The disrespect the miners who were only interested in gold and profit showed the Māori was awful - the marae were forcibly uprooted and thrown out of areas near the sea with grave sites desecrated simply in the name of greed and it showed, as it always has, that capitalism brings out both the best and worst in people.
As an aside, I visited Blackball yesterday where the New Zealand Labour Party was founded and topped up my revolutionary socialist credentials. Have a read about the Pike River Mine disaster of 2010 if you want to see neo-liberalism in all its glory.
And you, in a deliciously ironic manner, can keep calling for me to 'get a life'.
He too had a thing about always being right.
Get a life
It seems few people know what an “indirect cost” is or why it has to be 40-60%.
The reason the government forced universities to raise their indirect costs up to (typically) 40-60% was to force a huge amount of regulations on the universities while also minimizing the bookkeeping to comply with those regulations. This includes the work by contract managers, compliance lawyers, accountants, safety management, etc., who are required by the government per the terms of the contract. If universities had to allocate all those categories of labor to each contract hour-by-hour it would require too much bookkeeping, which would waste money. (I’m setting aside for now the question of whether or how much the regulations are wasting money and only discussing how you bookkeep the effort to comply with the regulations.)
So to save money, while also requiring universities to do these types of work, the government requires universities to roll those categories of labor into “cost pools” that must be allocated as a percent of the technical work in each of the contracts. While the actual “overhead” might be only 15%, these pooled labor charges that are required by the government are typically much more.
Second, the government doesn’t allow the universities to figure out their own indirect rates. These rates are determined by the federal government through audits every couple of years. The government then sends a document telling the university what rate to use for its cost pools. For example, the University of Colorado was told by the DHHS to use 54% (https://colorado.edu/controller/sites/default/files/attached-files/DHHS Negotiation Agreement July 2024.pdf) and U. Nebraska was told by DHHS to use 55.5% (https://uofnelincoln.sharepoint.com/sites/UNL-SponsoredProgramsWebsiteInfo/Shared Documents/F&A Rate Agreement 12-17-20.pdf?ga=1). 40-60% is not only reasonable to fulfill the terms of the contract, it is the rate that the government tells the university it can charge for all the work the government requires the university to do.
So if the government wants to reduce the indirect rate to 15%, then it needs to do one of these two things:
Either
(A) eliminate all the federal regulations that force the universities to do those categories of work (compliance, accounting, management, safety management, tracking harmful chemicals, etc.)
Or,
(B) stop requiring universities to pool those real costs into the “indirect cost” category and allow universities to include them in the “direct costs” of the contract…
https://x.com/DrPhiltill/status/1888274463562604808
Someone's done a JOB and hasn't flushed
I’m sure his tax arrangements are ultra efficient, mind.
Interestingly, given your Scott and Pasting of yourself repeatedly here with the same text in response to every post I make, I've had something of a revelation: you are just a tedious repetitive relentless and angry person, in general.
If it hadn't been Brexit over the last 9 years, it'd have been something else - you'd have found something, or maybe two things - and you'd have been the exactly the same.
Realising this has made me feel pity for you, and a level of human empathy for your condition, so I will leave you to nurse yourself and indulge your obsessions as you must.
Aberdeen is a fine city by the way, despite being definitively the coldest place on earth.
I don’t think a lot of people appreciate how much of their overall lifestyle and relative certainty is backstopped by a steady, boring stability of systems they don’t understand or even realize exist.
https://x.com/jasonc_nc/status/1888213714991546646
It can be explained simply by the fact you don't like Brexit and want to defend one of your own.
It’s arguably a failure of western diplomacy that the numbers have shifted so much against us.
Just you, my creepy stalker, desperate to talk about me. Again.
I don't fancy you.
Get a life
Fnerr fnerr
Every time he's actually tried marshalling 'people and resources' to manage an actual project to deliver an administrative rather than political outcome it's been shambolic.
But at sloganising he has few peers.
If neither of you have anything nice to say to each other then don't say anything.
Don't make me deploy the Farage photo, in fact I might change and lock both your profile pics to that photo.
I don't think it is any coincidence the truly evil organisation named itself after an Oxford University thing.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Isis
Although… maybe it was already taken by “t’Hamas”.
ℵ0 (Aleph 0) is countable eg the integers or primes.
ℵ1 (Aleph 1) is uncounatable eg the irrationals.
Finally, infinite is not the same as boundless. See Zeno's paradox.
I hope that clarifies it.
If our government and the Beeb had any sense of strategic opportunity then surely this would be it. What Musk is threatening is to leave the market for Anglophone soft power radio - which remains a market of hundreds of millions, potentially billions of listeners - completely open to monopoly by the BBC world service.
Trump says he will announce 25% tariffs on all imports of steel and aluminum tomorrow.
So much for the ‘vibe shift’
Catherine Liu"
https://unherd.com/2025/02/the-left-wont-let-go-of-woke/
Comment under this article. (I disagree with it).
"Andrew Horsman
What’s needed now is a “way out” for the large numbers of decent, ordinary well-meaning folk who got caught up in the radicalised madness of 2020. They need a way to save face, and keep their jobs. Confronting them with the uncomfortable fact that they committed themselves and their organisations to an inherently authoritarian, anti-human, anti-progressive ideology that was sponsored and fanned by various three letter agencies and the dark forces of global capitalism isn’t going to be the way to do it. They’ll only double down. Human beings are, amongst many other things, generally stubborn and egotistical and they can’t stand to be proven wrong."