At this time any sensible countries with good universities would be looking down the back of the sofa for some cash and offering funding to those top universities to subtly approach a lot of these research projects that are being gutted by Musk and friends and poaching them.
The UK should of course be in the optimal position with the ratings of Oxford, Cambridge, UCL, Imperial globally and language/cultural similarities but inevitably we will miss out as we need the money to give to Mauritius. Australia could do well and I would imagine Switzerland could make a good case to move there.
Well the government in their wisdom already cancelled the scientific super computer at Edinburgh, that would have made the UK only the third country after US and China with this capacity.....
If the government were serious they would be looking to fund as many SOTA GPU clusters at the leading unis as they are all short of H100 availability. Again, they have thrown their lots in with some weird eco data centre start-up who only have £100m in funding but are claiming they can a) make AMD cards do thing AMD themselves can't get to do and b) have billions to spend on new data centres.
So in a nutshell, on today’s menu we have Munich appeasement of tyrannical Putin, rearmament across Europe and the death of Conservative Party at home.
Does anyone remember when we used to argue about bus lanes on the M4 or the tax on a Cornish pasty?
We're actually in a thread about the Chancellor of the Exchequer not having any disciplinary action sixteen years ago. Should we stay on topic?
On defence spending. Taxes will have to rise if people think the defence capability necessary.
I know that's unpopular and the pathetic plastic patriots will screech about leaving the country, but if we want increased defence spending *and* to fix some of the stuff that's broken, then DOGE or yet more austerity/efficiency savings really won't get us there.
We do live in a democracy, though, which means that everyone needs to want to pay more taxes.
Otherwise the government of the day will just have to do the best they can with the taxes the public will let them raise. There are still choices to be made, better or worse paths to follow, even though I agree with you that a modest amount of extra taxes could go a long way.
This isn't a new problem. Ask Charles I or Cromwell about Parliament's willingness to recognise the fiscal needs of the state and to vote for increased taxation.
So in a nutshell, on today’s menu we have Munich appeasement of tyrannical Putin, rearmament across Europe and the death of Conservative Party at home.
Does anyone remember when we used to argue about bus lanes on the M4 or the tax on a Cornish pasty?
We're actually in a thread about the Chancellor of the Exchequer not having any disciplinary action sixteen years ago. Should we stay on topic?
On defence spending. Taxes will have to rise if people think the defence capability necessary.
What is the point when we will likely have a Russia friendly PM within a decade here? Defence spending only works long term with a sustainable political consensus around it.
Why are politicians and commentators so outraged by the Vance speech? They are allies of Murica. Their ally Murica has patronised, lectured and openly interfered with other countries for a long long time.
You choose who to be allied with. Seemingly we were fine when Murica messed with other people, but now react with Consternation and Uproar when they do it to us. Nothing has changed!
"Gen. Kellogg said US would respond to Russian ceasefire violations with immediate and overwhelming violence, citing Tomahawk strikes on Assad when he used chemical weapons. Defense Secretary Hegseth said the US will play no role in ceasefire enforcement at this same conference."
Interesting development. Ukraine has reached out to China, who says warm things about Ukraine's vision of peace and that Europe must be part of the settlement.
I know that's unpopular and the pathetic plastic patriots will screech about leaving the country, but if we want increased defence spending *and* to fix some of the stuff that's broken, then DOGE or yet more austerity/efficiency savings really won't get us there.
A whole series of nasty things are required. Luxury benefits for the wealthy need to be burned: that's not just getting rid of the triple lock, that's measures such as ending the preferential tax treatment of assets and property, abolition of higher rate tax relief on pension contributions, and the broad reimposition of death duties.
What we'll probably get in reality is yet another round of austerity cuts to public services, additional measures to try to frustrate the disabled from claiming benefits, blame rhetoric levelled at the unemployed, and even higher levies on earnings so that assets can be spared (at bare minimum another extension of fiscal drag, and possibly direct income tax hikes if the Treasury gets panicky enough.) In short, continuity Sunak, exactly as I predicted before the election.
Why are politicians and commentators so outraged by the Vance speech? They are allies of Murica. Their ally Murica has patronised, lectured and openly interfered with other countries for a long long time.
You choose who to be allied with. Seemingly we were fine when Murica messed with other people, but now react with Consternation and Uproar when they do it to us. Nothing has changed!
Because those erstwhile allies are now at best unreliable and at worst actually hostile?
Why are politicians and commentators so outraged by the Vance speech? They are allies of Murica. Their ally Murica has patronised, lectured and openly interfered with other countries for a long long time.
You choose who to be allied with. Seemingly we were fine when Murica messed with other people, but now react with Consternation and Uproar when they do it to us. Nothing has changed!
With due respect, that is a pretty daft comment.
Firstly, not everyone was 'fine' with all of past US foreign policy.
Secondly, when it is directed at you, of course you complain more! Your comment is like saying "Zelensky has no right to be so upset about Russia invading Ukraine, when he wasn't that upset about Russia invading Georgia"
So in a nutshell, on today’s menu we have Munich appeasement of tyrannical Putin, rearmament across Europe and the death of Conservative Party at home.
Does anyone remember when we used to argue about bus lanes on the M4 or the tax on a Cornish pasty?
We're actually in a thread about the Chancellor of the Exchequer not having any disciplinary action sixteen years ago. Should we stay on topic?
On defence spending. Taxes will have to rise if people think the defence capability necessary.
What is the point when we will likely have a Russia friendly PM within a decade here? Defence spending only works long term with a sustainable political consensus around it.
Why bother with government at all then? It's just nihilism.
An example of how silly political correctness is: in the UK the word "handicapped" is regarded as unacceptable these days and has been for quite a long time, but I believe it is still used officially in the United States.
The US until very recently were quite comfortable with using the term mental retardation to describe people with learning difficulties. But describe somebody from the Orient as Oriental (which was the widely acceptede term in the UK for a long time) in polite company and you will be more than likely asked to leave and labelled as a massive racist.
I was quite taken aback when people used the first example and I was also taken aside and asked never to use the second phrase ever again when I innocently used it to say I think I wished to have some sort of Asian food.
The odd thing about the word 'oriental' being offensive is that you still commonly see it used in restaurant names just like here.
My local multi-ethnic supermarket is called Asia Oriental. And it is fairly new - opened after Covid I think. But I suppose it is a mish mash of food from all over the Orient, plus the subcontinent (is India in the Orient?) and some Caribbean.
Isn't it that "oriental" is potentially offensive when used about people, but not about objects or places? So a bit like the difference between referring to "coloured people" and coloured pencils?
Good, but it needs to be a sizeable increase. Going to 2.5% or 2.7% or something like that will just hurt the public finances without yielding much increase in capability.
Like many things the government does, it would be prudent to ask what the MOD is actually going to do with the extra cash. An awful lot of taxpayers money currently goes into MOD procurement, often getting spent on what looks more like social security for UK defence contractors and Scottish shipyards than things useful for fighting in an actual hot war. The sagas we get to hear about such as the Ajax APCs (over 8 years late, at least 20% over budget) or the Nimrod upgrades (scrapped £3.5bn into the program) suggest that the procurement is probably the worst bits of the process state in action.
I've very little confidence tipping an extra £60bn a year into this black hole will do much to enhance our fighting capability, although it will probably work wonder for BAE's balance sheet.
One if the advantages of increasing defence spending during a war is that you have a slightly better idea of priorities, and what doesn't work. And we're already halfway through a defence review.
So we'll probably be slightly less inefficient/profligate this time around. Fir example, we might actually buy more than two days worth of munitions for our weapons systems.
Perhaps scrapping the two large aircraft carriers that provide zero defence to the European theatre would be a better use of resources.
Give them to Mauritius instead of cash for the Diego Garcia lease?
This isn't ideal for the pro Mauritius wing of the UK government.
“How closely related are modern anti-democratic beliefs among white Americans, and to what extent are these beliefs shaped by exclusionary racial attitudes? Using data from the Political Unrest Study, the Collaborative Multiracial Post-Election Survey (CMPS), Democracy Fund + UCLA Nationscape, and the Survey of the Performance of American Elections (SPAE), we find that support for voting restrictions, opposition to voting expansions, belief in widespread voter fraud, and support for overturning democratic election results load onto a single underlying dimension. While the prevalence of anti-democratic beliefs among white Americans has remained stable over the past decade, these beliefs have become increasingly interconnected. Furthermore, racial attitudes towards out-groups—including racial resentment, anti-immigrant sentiment, and white racial grievance—strongly correlate with anti-democratic beliefs, whereas in-group racial attitudes do not. Analysis of multiple waves of the American National Election Studies (ANES) reveals that racial resentment and white grievance now explain twice as much variation in anti-democratic beliefs as they did in 2012. Experimental evidence also demonstrates that white Americans react negatively to voting expansions when the racial implications of these reforms are made explicit. These findings underscore the growing alignment between anti-democratic beliefs and racial attitudes in contemporary U.S. politics.”
Interesting development. Ukraine has reached out to China, who says warm things about Ukraine's vision of peace and that Europe must be part of the settlement.
Interesting development. Ukraine has reached out to China, who says warm things about Ukraine's vision of peace and that Europe must be part of the settlement.
Hardly surprising - China currently has an incredibly sweet deal with Russia (as Russia has few other markets / friends) and probably doesn't want it to change...
As was pointed out on here after Trump was elected - the trade tariffs are likely to push Europe towards China and China towards Europe... This is one of the examples where China is doing the EU a favour in return for something we will discover later..
Good, but it needs to be a sizeable increase. Going to 2.5% or 2.7% or something like that will just hurt the public finances without yielding much increase in capability.
Like many things the government does, it would be prudent to ask what the MOD is actually going to do with the extra cash. An awful lot of taxpayers money currently goes into MOD procurement, often getting spent on what looks more like social security for UK defence contractors and Scottish shipyards than things useful for fighting in an actual hot war. The sagas we get to hear about such as the Ajax APCs (over 8 years late, at least 20% over budget) or the Nimrod upgrades (scrapped £3.5bn into the program) suggest that the procurement is probably the worst bits of the process state in action.
I've very little confidence tipping an extra £60bn a year into this black hole will do much to enhance our fighting capability, although it will probably work wonder for BAE's balance sheet.
I'm inclined to agree on £60bn a year - there's no way a budget can be almost doubled in a single year and spent efficiently. It needs to be about capabilities not headline numbers, and is completely dependent on political will existing:
1 - Shorter term ie tactical. What capabilities do we need, what can actually be done quickly, and how do we get there? How do we collectively (as say the Joint Expeditionary Force) support and protect Ukraine now?
2 - Longer term? How do we deter Russia, and position ourselves to prevent the USA exploiting Ukraine or selling it down the river, in the longer term?
3 - How do we manage our relationship with a (possibly former) ally run by an old career criminal interested only in his personal interests, who mainly listens to the voices in his head, and has a regime gutted of competence?
Trump's 5% is posturing - the USA only spent 2.7% in 2024.
So I suggest more like 2.6% is likely for 24-25, and 2.75-2.8% next year for the UK, which will build on various things that have already been started. A lot of the stuff is relatively inexpensive, such as gingering up personnel who have left, and have a continuing obligation if required.
Each extra 0.1% is around £2.5bn per annum.
There were plenty of proposals of how to raise funds at the budget that were not used. For example from a tweak to the Tax Relief on pension contributions.
The doge gutting of the American Bureaucracy is what reform wants to do here.... watch what happens in the states and remember for the 2029 parliamentary elections.
Apparently the fratboys terminated a bunch of the nuclear administration while they were transporting a 'physics package'
The death toll from these idiots is going to be yoooooooooge
Meanwhile Musk responded to Trump's Napoleon tweet (which he also probably wrote) with 14 flags, just in case there is a single person on Earth who hasn't got the message yet
Didn't you read yesterday's thread? Their dismissal was all a conspiracy to make DOGE look bad...
DOGE are evil fuckwits. The people defending them are worse.
Lots of people on here get really excited by the idea of slashing govt and firing thousands/millions of govt employees. The disaster that DOGE will become probably won't change their minds, but at least it will be a useful counterexample.
a) a non recovering alcoholic b) one of those weirdos who drinks their own piss c) someone who has his water specially shipped in by a UK water company
Hear Ye the grief of man in winter’s chain! My name is Morris, my name is Dancer Yet my radiators bleed, and groan in vain, And all I do is ponder: PB’s famed Entrancer
O Leon! Thee the southern heavens crown, Where myrtles lean to kiss the yielding tide; Soft airs attend thee, golden suns look down, Whilst here in iron bonds I grieve and bide
Would that my feet, unshackled from this fate, Might dance with nymphets in the sois, the sunlit lane And shake this bitter frost from out my gait -! But Leon reigns afar, and I remain
Why are politicians and commentators so outraged by the Vance speech? They are allies of Murica. Their ally Murica has patronised, lectured and openly interfered with other countries for a long long time.
You choose who to be allied with. Seemingly we were fine when Murica messed with other people, but now react with Consternation and Uproar when they do it to us. Nothing has changed!
America signalled that they favour Russia and are antagonistic towards us. That mattters and is not in our national interest.
We can’t feed pupils for 60p, say schools in blow to Labour breakfast club pledge
This weekend, the independent publication Schools Week highlighted how some headteachers in primaries, while enthusiastic about the overall aims, were refusing to take part in an “early adopter” pilot scheme for 750 volunteer schools because only 60p was being provided by the government per pupil.
Interesting development. Ukraine has reached out to China, who says warm things about Ukraine's vision of peace and that Europe must be part of the settlement.
Hardly surprising - China currently has an incredibly sweet deal with Russia (as Russia has few other markets / friends) and probably doesn't want it to change...
As was pointed out on here after Trump was elected - the trade tariffs are likely to push Europe towards China and China towards Europe... This is one of the examples where China is doing the EU a favour in return for something we will discover later..
I think China has bigger fish to fry than Russia. It sees an opportunity to peel Europe away from the US to the Chinese advantage.
Edit sorry this was intended in response to @Kamski. You make the same point as I do. Russia and China share the same view on transatlantic alliances.
Why are politicians and commentators so outraged by the Vance speech? They are allies of Murica. Their ally Murica has patronised, lectured and openly interfered with other countries for a long long time.
You choose who to be allied with. Seemingly we were fine when Murica messed with other people, but now react with Consternation and Uproar when they do it to us. Nothing has changed!
With due respect, that is a pretty daft comment.
Firstly, not everyone was 'fine' with all of past US foreign policy.
Secondly, when it is directed at you, of course you complain more! Your comment is like saying "Zelensky has no right to be so upset about Russia invading Ukraine, when he wasn't that upset about Russia invading Georgia"
But this is literally America. This is what it does - and we have supported it and allied with it as it does the exact thing it’s now doing to us.
I read the reports about the speech and I’m thinking about people voting for the Leopards Eating Faces party then saying I didn’t think they would eat MY face.
Your analogy is silly. I’m talking about people who SUPPORT the people doing the invading. Not opposing them. When did Ukraine support Russia interfering with other countries?
Interesting development. Ukraine has reached out to China, who says warm things about Ukraine's vision of peace and that Europe must be part of the settlement.
Hardly surprising - China currently has an incredibly sweet deal with Russia (as Russia has few other markets / friends) and probably doesn't want it to change...
As was pointed out on here after Trump was elected - the trade tariffs are likely to push Europe towards China and China towards Europe... This is one of the examples where China is doing the EU a favour in return for something we will discover later..
Global strife is always good news for the rising hegemon. A few notches further up the ladder of influence.
China can also see Trump’s geopolitical weakness, which must be heartening.
This site is much much better for the existence of @BlancheLivermore who is intelligent, insightful, unexpected, very human, likeable, funny, and provides a unique perspective on life - as a postie from an apparently affluent family - when he/she is not doing excellent travelogues or popping up with photos of the latest tomatoes
Why is it always the fun people like @BlancheLivermore that get banned when we have five fucking billion boring witless completely interchangeable centrist dads - from @Mexicanpete to @kinabalu to @turbotubbs to @Nigelb to @whofuckingcares - whose commentary is so enervatingly, soul sappingly tedious and dreary that banning a few of THEM would be a mercy to the rest of us?
This seems to be a feature not a bug. PB is STRIVING to be duller, by the day
After a very brief spat with our Russian troll yesterday lunchtime I left you alone for the day. I genuinely went to Penarth for the afternoon. I had a nice coffee (very nice coffee) and a cake at Brod, the Danish bakery (lots of talk of Greenland - they are furious) but forgot to take photos to post later, sorry about that.
Still far too many non-right wingers left on here for you then? There must be, ooh, at least five, so I will bid you farewell and try to leave you alone today too.
Interesting development. Ukraine has reached out to China, who says warm things about Ukraine's vision of peace and that Europe must be part of the settlement.
Hardly surprising - China currently has an incredibly sweet deal with Russia (as Russia has few other markets / friends) and probably doesn't want it to change...
As was pointed out on here after Trump was elected - the trade tariffs are likely to push Europe towards China and China towards Europe... This is one of the examples where China is doing the EU a favour in return for something we will discover later..
I think China has bigger fish to fry than Russia. It sees an opportunity to peel Europe away from the US to the Chinese advantage.
Trump is doing that himself - China is just lucky enough to be a position to take advantage of it.
At this time any sensible countries with good universities would be looking down the back of the sofa for some cash and offering funding to those top universities to subtly approach a lot of these research projects that are being gutted by Musk and friends and poaching them.
The UK should of course be in the optimal position with the ratings of Oxford, Cambridge, UCL, Imperial globally and language/cultural similarities but inevitably we will miss out as we need the money to give to Mauritius. Australia could do well and I would imagine Switzerland could make a good case to move there.
The answer is obvious - Chagos College Oxford, St Diego Garcia Cambridge ... and Imperial Mauritius.
The doge gutting of the American Bureaucracy is what reform wants to do here.... watch what happens in the states and remember for the 2029 parliamentary elections.
Apparently the fratboys terminated a bunch of the nuclear administration while they were transporting a 'physics package'
The death toll from these idiots is going to be yoooooooooge
Meanwhile Musk responded to Trump's Napoleon tweet (which he also probably wrote) with 14 flags, just in case there is a single person on Earth who hasn't got the message yet
Didn't you read yesterday's thread? Their dismissal was all a conspiracy to make DOGE look bad...
DOGE are evil fuckwits. The people defending them are worse.
Lots of people on here get really excited by the idea of slashing govt and firing thousands/millions of govt employees. The disaster that DOGE will become probably won't change their minds, but at least it will be a useful counterexample.
As I showed a few days ago, when you look at the numbers our problem is not that we’re spending beyond our means and need to cut or tax more. It’s that we’re not spending enough as households or businesses. Private debt has fallen hugely since 2009. Government needs to encourage us to turn on the taps again. That will refill the government coffers.
At this time any sensible countries with good universities would be looking down the back of the sofa for some cash and offering funding to those top universities to subtly approach a lot of these research projects that are being gutted by Musk and friends and poaching them.
The UK should of course be in the optimal position with the ratings of Oxford, Cambridge, UCL, Imperial globally and language/cultural similarities but inevitably we will miss out as we need the money to give to Mauritius. Australia could do well and I would imagine Switzerland could make a good case to move there.
It does seem a particularly poor time for our universities to be threatened with bankruptcy and mass redundancies. I shouldn't think there are a lot of spare places for academic refugees from America.
Why are politicians and commentators so outraged by the Vance speech? They are allies of Murica. Their ally Murica has patronised, lectured and openly interfered with other countries for a long long time.
You choose who to be allied with. Seemingly we were fine when Murica messed with other people, but now react with Consternation and Uproar when they do it to us. Nothing has changed!
Why indeed ?
A debate on the enemy within is fairly apposite, when the cornerstone of NATO is threatening to sell out European security.
The doge gutting of the American Bureaucracy is what reform wants to do here.... watch what happens in the states and remember for the 2029 parliamentary elections.
Apparently the fratboys terminated a bunch of the nuclear administration while they were transporting a 'physics package'
The death toll from these idiots is going to be yoooooooooge
Meanwhile Musk responded to Trump's Napoleon tweet (which he also probably wrote) with 14 flags, just in case there is a single person on Earth who hasn't got the message yet
Didn't you read yesterday's thread? Their dismissal was all a conspiracy to make DOGE look bad...
DOGE are evil fuckwits. The people defending them are worse.
Lots of people on here get really excited by the idea of slashing govt and firing thousands/millions of govt employees. The disaster that DOGE will become probably won't change their minds, but at least it will be a useful counterexample.
As I showed a few days ago, when you look at the numbers our problem is not that we’re spending beyond our means and need to cut or tax more. It’s that we’re not spending enough as households or businesses. Private debt has fallen hugely since 2009. Government needs to encourage us to turn on the taps again. That will refill the government coffers.
Or perhaps that improvement in the nations savings rate should be incentives into investments that improve domestic productivity growth, rather than a consumer boom that sucks in imports, or a further house price bubble.
"Gen. Kellogg said US would respond to Russian ceasefire violations with immediate and overwhelming violence, citing Tomahawk strikes on Assad when he used chemical weapons. Defense Secretary Hegseth said the US will play no role in ceasefire enforcement at this same conference."
Why are politicians and commentators so outraged by the Vance speech? They are allies of Murica. Their ally Murica has patronised, lectured and openly interfered with other countries for a long long time.
You choose who to be allied with. Seemingly we were fine when Murica messed with other people, but now react with Consternation and Uproar when they do it to us. Nothing has changed!
With due respect, that is a pretty daft comment.
Firstly, not everyone was 'fine' with all of past US foreign policy.
Secondly, when it is directed at you, of course you complain more! Your comment is like saying "Zelensky has no right to be so upset about Russia invading Ukraine, when he wasn't that upset about Russia invading Georgia"
But this is literally America. This is what it does - and we have supported it and allied with it as it does the exact thing it’s now doing to us.
I read the reports about the speech and I’m thinking about people voting for the Leopards Eating Faces party then saying I didn’t think they would eat MY face.
Your analogy is silly. I’m talking about people who SUPPORT the people doing the invading. Not opposing them. When did Ukraine support Russia interfering with other countries?
Right. Let me put it this way. The US was a critical ally for 80 years, primarily against the Soviet Union/Russia. Now that Western Europe is almost at war with Russia, the US is abandoning its allies (who also loyally died alongside America's wars elsewhere), and is instead using speeches to attack them. And your reaction is 'what are people complaining about?'. Sorry, but that is properly nuts, whatever your views on Pinochet or whatever.
Why are politicians and commentators so outraged by the Vance speech? They are allies of Murica. Their ally Murica has patronised, lectured and openly interfered with other countries for a long long time.
You choose who to be allied with. Seemingly we were fine when Murica messed with other people, but now react with Consternation and Uproar when they do it to us. Nothing has changed!
With due respect, that is a pretty daft comment.
Firstly, not everyone was 'fine' with all of past US foreign policy.
Secondly, when it is directed at you, of course you complain more! Your comment is like saying "Zelensky has no right to be so upset about Russia invading Ukraine, when he wasn't that upset about Russia invading Georgia"
But this is literally America. This is what it does - and we have supported it and allied with it as it does the exact thing it’s now doing to us.
I read the reports about the speech and I’m thinking about people voting for the Leopards Eating Faces party then saying I didn’t think they would eat MY face.
Your analogy is silly. I’m talking about people who SUPPORT the people doing the invading. Not opposing them. When did Ukraine support Russia interfering with other countries?
The outrage at Vance’s speech was that he turned up to a conference about war and peace and started spewing out a 4-chan tirade about abortion clinics and how great the AfD are.
They were expecting to be browbeaten about defence. They weren’t expecting the true weirdness of what followed.
Interesting development. Ukraine has reached out to China, who says warm things about Ukraine's vision of peace and that Europe must be part of the settlement.
Hardly surprising - China currently has an incredibly sweet deal with Russia (as Russia has few other markets / friends) and probably doesn't want it to change...
As was pointed out on here after Trump was elected - the trade tariffs are likely to push Europe towards China and China towards Europe... This is one of the examples where China is doing the EU a favour in return for something we will discover later..
I think China has bigger fish to fry than Russia. It sees an opportunity to peel Europe away from the US to the Chinese advantage.
Trump is doing that himself - China is just lucky enough to be a position to take advantage of it.
Indeed. A country's national interest is whatever it chooses it to be, even if the leader of it is someone like Trump. Nevertheless this administration is weakening America. It didn't create NATO as a charitable act towards Europe.
On the tragic plane/helicopter collision the other week:
"The NTSB held another press conference about the DCA collision yesterday. Lots of focus on the altitudes of the helicopter, and while we know the helicopter was at 278feet based on its radar altimeter, investigators don’t know what altitude was displayed to crew.
Did you know that the threshold for altimeter accuracy suggested by the AIM is 75 feet? The routes along the river literally didn’t have enough margin for error."
75 foot difference is okay when at thousands of feet. Not so okay when having to navigate in a corridor only 200 foot hight, with 0 being the ground...
(*) I believe there are two, of different types?
I suggest that the actual cause will be irrelevant to Trump and Hegseth, who have already declared it to be due to DEI aiui reducing standards. It's a lie, but that does not matter.
Since the helicopter pilot was a woman, that may be the identified cause. Hegseth has some very strange views about women in combat.
As to the actual cause - I'd think perhaps something in the ATC system, either lost communication or what I think is sometimes called "Swiss Cheesing" that is leaving very tight "holes" for people to fly through, increasing risk. That would I think match the 75ft separation quoted.
The doge gutting of the American Bureaucracy is what reform wants to do here.... watch what happens in the states and remember for the 2029 parliamentary elections.
Apparently the fratboys terminated a bunch of the nuclear administration while they were transporting a 'physics package'
The death toll from these idiots is going to be yoooooooooge
Meanwhile Musk responded to Trump's Napoleon tweet (which he also probably wrote) with 14 flags, just in case there is a single person on Earth who hasn't got the message yet
Didn't you read yesterday's thread? Their dismissal was all a conspiracy to make DOGE look bad...
DOGE are evil fuckwits. The people defending them are worse.
Lots of people on here get really excited by the idea of slashing govt and firing thousands/millions of govt employees. The disaster that DOGE will become probably won't change their minds, but at least it will be a useful counterexample.
As I showed a few days ago, when you look at the numbers our problem is not that we’re spending beyond our means and need to cut or tax more. It’s that we’re not spending enough as households or businesses. Private debt has fallen hugely since 2009. Government needs to encourage us to turn on the taps again. That will refill the government coffers.
Or perhaps that improvement in the nations savings rate should be incentives into investments that improve domestic productivity growth, rather than a consumer boom that sucks in imports, or a further house price bubble.
That would be ideal, but even a consumer boom would be better than the proto-Japan we have been turning into.
On the tragic plane/helicopter collision the other week:
"The NTSB held another press conference about the DCA collision yesterday. Lots of focus on the altitudes of the helicopter, and while we know the helicopter was at 278feet based on its radar altimeter, investigators don’t know what altitude was displayed to crew.
Did you know that the threshold for altimeter accuracy suggested by the AIM is 75 feet? The routes along the river literally didn’t have enough margin for error."
75 foot difference is okay when at thousands of feet. Not so okay when having to navigate in a corridor only 200 foot hight, with 0 being the ground...
(*) I believe there are two, of different types?
I suggest that the actual cause will be irrelevant to Trump and Hegseth, who have already declared it to be due to DEI aiui reducing standards. It's a lie, but that does not matter.
Since the helicopter pilot was a woman, that may be the identified cause. Hegseth has some very strange views about women in combat.
Interesting development. Ukraine has reached out to China, who says warm things about Ukraine's vision of peace and that Europe must be part of the settlement.
Hardly surprising - China currently has an incredibly sweet deal with Russia (as Russia has few other markets / friends) and probably doesn't want it to change...
As was pointed out on here after Trump was elected - the trade tariffs are likely to push Europe towards China and China towards Europe... This is one of the examples where China is doing the EU a favour in return for something we will discover later..
Yes, but the European market is much more valuable and interesting than the Russian one to the Chinese.
Canny of Ukraine to cosy up to China. America is increasingly likely to abandon Ukraine and needs must. Cosying up to China potentially adversely impacts Russias arms supply too, so potentially double bubble.
On the tragic plane/helicopter collision the other week:
"The NTSB held another press conference about the DCA collision yesterday. Lots of focus on the altitudes of the helicopter, and while we know the helicopter was at 278feet based on its radar altimeter, investigators don’t know what altitude was displayed to crew.
Did you know that the threshold for altimeter accuracy suggested by the AIM is 75 feet? The routes along the river literally didn’t have enough margin for error."
75 foot difference is okay when at thousands of feet. Not so okay when having to navigate in a corridor only 200 foot hight, with 0 being the ground...
(*) I believe there are two, of different types?
I suggest that the actual cause will be irrelevant to Trump and Hegseth, who have already declared it to be due to DEI aiui reducing standards. It's a lie, but that does not matter.
Since the helicopter pilot was a woman, that may be the identified cause. Hegseth has some very strange views about women in combat.
Is he allocating the money to lease Diego Garcia as defence spending?
Not sure £90 million a year would make much difference to the numbers.
Isn’t your point part of the problem? Everyone says “£90m is nothing in the big picture” except that all these £90 millions that aren’t that big add up and are collectively big.
Think what you can buy for the military with £90m - how many machine guns, bullets, shells. It’s over 69,000 SA-80 machine guns for example.
All these figures can be used and depending on where you sit, £90m for the army might be better than £90m to Mauritius.
Interesting development. Ukraine has reached out to China, who says warm things about Ukraine's vision of peace and that Europe must be part of the settlement.
Hardly surprising - China currently has an incredibly sweet deal with Russia (as Russia has few other markets / friends) and probably doesn't want it to change...
As was pointed out on here after Trump was elected - the trade tariffs are likely to push Europe towards China and China towards Europe... This is one of the examples where China is doing the EU a favour in return for something we will discover later..
Yes, but the European market is much more valuable and interesting than the Russian one to the Chinese.
Canny of Ukraine to cosy up to China. America is increasingly likely to abandon Ukraine and needs must. Cosying up to China potentially adversely impacts Russias arms supply too, so potentially double bubble.
What we are seeing here is the starting consequences of America becoming an unreliable friend. Ukraine is reaching out for support elsewhere. Europe is starting to think seriously about its own defence and that of Ukraine without the US (and being seriously alarmed about where we are in that respect).
America is determined to go its own way on AI and ostentatiously refuses to even discuss EU style regulation. We find ourselves in a difficult position. On defence we are much more aligned with Europe. After all, we live here. On trade the government is still trying to find a niche where we can be pals with both. I don't blame or criticise them for this, it would be good for the UK if we achieved it, but it is going to be a very difficult path whilst that unpredictable bully is in the Whitehouse.
I know that's unpopular and the pathetic plastic patriots will screech about leaving the country, but if we want increased defence spending *and* to fix some of the stuff that's broken, then DOGE or yet more austerity/efficiency savings really won't get us there.
Whack 1p on all income tax bands and 5p on the 45p band and call is the National Defence Tax or similar.
We need to adjust our defence spending to the new world reality of an expansionist Russia and hostile USA.
Hear Ye the grief of man in winter’s chain! My name is Morris, my name is Dancer Yet my radiators bleed, and groan in vain, And all I do is ponder: PB’s famed Entrancer
O Leon! Thee the southern heavens crown, Where myrtles lean to kiss the yielding tide; Soft airs attend thee, golden suns look down, Whilst here in iron bonds I grieve and bide
Would that my feet, unshackled from this fate, Might dance with nymphets in the sois, the sunlit lane And shake this bitter frost from out my gait -! But Leon reigns afar, and I remain
Dare I ask if you penned that yourself, or had some assistance of a machine nature?
Yes, of course, quietly requesting that my own country retains some semblance of the ethnic and cultural identity it has had for 1500 years makes me a “Nazi” equivalent to “Hitler”
You know what? This madness is gonna end badly for you guys. Don’t say you weren’t warned
The idea that "if you don't lie over for us within a few years, we're gonna have to win by methods you're REALLY not going to find to your liking" seems to be awfully in vogue at the moment on the North London loony right.
In the words of the ex-spad husband of a commissioning editor at the Spectator (on his Substack site):
"Conventional wisdom in 1999 was ‘joining the euro is inevitable’, in 2004 it was ‘Blair has a massive lead in the polls on regional assemblies’, in 2015 it was ‘there’s almost no chance of Leave winning’, in 2019 it was ‘there’s no way through the impasse’, in 2020 it was ‘covid vaccines are practically impossible’, and in 2021 it was ‘no chance you push out Boris’. Pushing out Starmer with some new force doesn’t feel more improbable than those examples did at the time.
Beating Starmer in an election is the easiest part. The hardest part is unifying a force on the Right that voters prefer given that much of ‘the right’ in SW1 would rather stay failing, stay fighting each other as they’ve been trained to by culture and incentives, and leave Starmer in office and see the country taken over by the IMF rather than do what’s needed to win and turn the country around. Often in history people cannot be saved, only ‘retired’. It’s possible the Tories can only be buried as quickly as possible but this can’t yet be known, it depends on how the cards fall. And if that does prove necessary, this means little chance of a serious government before ~2032 by which time many problems will be profound and serious violence harder to avoid.** We should try the easier path first."
(This descends into embarrassing gibberish in places. But the basic idea is "We achieved Brexit and we ain't finished, not by a long chalk, and maybe this won't be easy and fast, but we know about History, and if this isn't easy then it's gonna be bigly and seriously violent with a capital V." If this isn't deliberate destabilisation of a country, I don't know what is.)
What the fuck is continuous mass immigration on the scale of 300,000-1m people a year but “deliberate destabilisation”?
No one voted for this. Time and again we have voted AGAINST this. Yet on and on it goes
So democracy has ceased to function. What happens then?
There is quite a lot you and I would likely disagree about - I'm basically a bit of a wet social democrat - but I think we're more or less on the same page about the scale of immigration. I.e. it's mad. An open door policy on immigration - about 1.2 million in the year ending mid-2023, with a net value of nearly 800,000 even accounting for those going in the opposite direction - cannot be anything other than destabilising. Apart from all the other negatives, out of control population growth entirely defeats the object of Angela Rayner's housing drive.
You would hope that this Government gets that and will put an end to it. I don't expect it though, sadly.
I actually think some in the Labour Party DO get this, but it’s far too late, and too many still don’t get it - or simply won’t
Absent a tech revolution saving us, here’s how this will play out. European electorates - UK definitely included - will vote for increasingly hard then far right parties. These parties won’t just limit or prohibit immigration, they will go much further. They will begin mass deportations of - firstly - illegal migrants and then legal migrants. Millions of people will be forcibly expelled and borders will be guarded with live ammunition
No doubt I will be accused of wishcasting. This is not that. I have two daughters growing up in the UK and Oz and I dearly want them to grow up in peaceful, racially harmonious societies
I simply don’t believe that’s doable. A brutally violent outcome is now unavoidable (absent the saviour machines). It’s so bleak I generally try not to think about it
Professor David Betz of King's College London believes that we are heading towards ideal conditions for civil conflict:
Moreover, it is not simply that the conditions are present in the West; it is, rather, that the conditions are nearing the ideal. The relative wealth, social stability and related lack of demographic factionalism, plus the perception of the ability of normal politics to solve problems that once made the West seem immune to civil war are now no longer valid. In fact, in each of these categories the direction of pull is towards civil conflict. Increasingly, people perceive this to be the case and their levels of confidence in government would seem to be declining even more in the face of the apparent unwillingness or inability of leaders to confront the situation honestly.
I think we're further away from civil conflict now than we were in the period 2016-19, when the refusal or inability of a large part of the political class to implement the results of the largest vote in the nation's history, which they themselves had called and promised to implement, meant that the legitimacy of our democracy was under serious threat.
And we're considerably further away than we were in the late 1970s, when tens of millions of days were lost to strikes, rubbish was piling high in Leicester Square, the dead were going unburied and Northern Ireland was being, well, Northern Ireland.
But maybe I'm one of nature's optimists.
Sadly I think you are wrong, people here are mostly top 10% the world as it is works for them. There is growing anger and I am not top 10% I mix with these people daily. I think reform will be tried first then when it doesn't work as it wont then it will become civil conflict...the bottom 50% really don't have anything to lose
Here is an example, people here go on about people like nurses having to use a food bank....fair enough then they go on in other posts going lets just add a couple of percent on income tax....yeah well that person on min wage already struggling is going to have 20£ less each month.....2% extra for most here means I will buy a cheaper bottle of wine
The solution to the increasingly stretched and threadbare state is therefore, amongst other things, expressly not to keep jacking up income tax and national insurance, but to end the excessively lenient treatment of assets. That, and to better target benefits and tax breaks on those who really need it.
An older society is a poorer society, but that would be a lot easier to manage if more of the burden was shifted away from work and put onto capital, and if large quantities of tax receipts weren't needlessly squandered. To return to one of my favourite topics, I care about skint old people having enough to eat, but I'm against propping up the spending power of rich old people with taxation and wealth transfers that erode the living standards of poorer, younger ones. The hikes in taxes on work to raise billions to subsidise the booking of cruise holidays by asset millionaire pensioners must be stopped.
Well this awful government has whacked up inheritance tax on farmers, whacked up national insurance on business owners and slashed pensioners winter fuel allowance so some have been frozen this winter let alone going on cruise holidays
The idea pensioners are "freezing to death" because wealthier ones lost a benefit that has been less than their pension goes up each year is laughable and revealing that the attitude is that everyone else should go without so the special interest groups you favour can be kept in the comfort to which they've been accustomed while everyone else has got poorer so they could be protected. Selfishness off the scale.
Pensioners on just state pension and £13k a year ie less than minimum wage, have lost their winter fuel allowance this year and genuinely are at risk of serious illness like pneumonia. Reeves didn't just target millionaire OAPs on cruises.
It isn't selfishness, far from it, Reeves cutting WFA for such low income pensioners was immoral
Don't know where you are getting this nonsense from. There are many, many sources of help for those on low incomes.
Interesting development. Ukraine has reached out to China, who says warm things about Ukraine's vision of peace and that Europe must be part of the settlement.
Hardly surprising - China currently has an incredibly sweet deal with Russia (as Russia has few other markets / friends) and probably doesn't want it to change...
As was pointed out on here after Trump was elected - the trade tariffs are likely to push Europe towards China and China towards Europe... This is one of the examples where China is doing the EU a favour in return for something we will discover later..
Is this then the true global realignment? China and Europe on one side, Russia and America on the other - it would certainly be very different from anything we’ve lived through. Big questions for the likes of India, Australia, Brazil and others.
Yes, of course, quietly requesting that my own country retains some semblance of the ethnic and cultural identity it has had for 1500 years makes me a “Nazi” equivalent to “Hitler”
You know what? This madness is gonna end badly for you guys. Don’t say you weren’t warned
The idea that "if you don't lie over for us within a few years, we're gonna have to win by methods you're REALLY not going to find to your liking" seems to be awfully in vogue at the moment on the North London loony right.
In the words of the ex-spad husband of a commissioning editor at the Spectator (on his Substack site):
"Conventional wisdom in 1999 was ‘joining the euro is inevitable’, in 2004 it was ‘Blair has a massive lead in the polls on regional assemblies’, in 2015 it was ‘there’s almost no chance of Leave winning’, in 2019 it was ‘there’s no way through the impasse’, in 2020 it was ‘covid vaccines are practically impossible’, and in 2021 it was ‘no chance you push out Boris’. Pushing out Starmer with some new force doesn’t feel more improbable than those examples did at the time.
Beating Starmer in an election is the easiest part. The hardest part is unifying a force on the Right that voters prefer given that much of ‘the right’ in SW1 would rather stay failing, stay fighting each other as they’ve been trained to by culture and incentives, and leave Starmer in office and see the country taken over by the IMF rather than do what’s needed to win and turn the country around. Often in history people cannot be saved, only ‘retired’. It’s possible the Tories can only be buried as quickly as possible but this can’t yet be known, it depends on how the cards fall. And if that does prove necessary, this means little chance of a serious government before ~2032 by which time many problems will be profound and serious violence harder to avoid.** We should try the easier path first."
(This descends into embarrassing gibberish in places. But the basic idea is "We achieved Brexit and we ain't finished, not by a long chalk, and maybe this won't be easy and fast, but we know about History, and if this isn't easy then it's gonna be bigly and seriously violent with a capital V." If this isn't deliberate destabilisation of a country, I don't know what is.)
What the fuck is continuous mass immigration on the scale of 300,000-1m people a year but “deliberate destabilisation”?
No one voted for this. Time and again we have voted AGAINST this. Yet on and on it goes
So democracy has ceased to function. What happens then?
There is quite a lot you and I would likely disagree about - I'm basically a bit of a wet social democrat - but I think we're more or less on the same page about the scale of immigration. I.e. it's mad. An open door policy on immigration - about 1.2 million in the year ending mid-2023, with a net value of nearly 800,000 even accounting for those going in the opposite direction - cannot be anything other than destabilising. Apart from all the other negatives, out of control population growth entirely defeats the object of Angela Rayner's housing drive.
You would hope that this Government gets that and will put an end to it. I don't expect it though, sadly.
I actually think some in the Labour Party DO get this, but it’s far too late, and too many still don’t get it - or simply won’t
Absent a tech revolution saving us, here’s how this will play out. European electorates - UK definitely included - will vote for increasingly hard then far right parties. These parties won’t just limit or prohibit immigration, they will go much further. They will begin mass deportations of - firstly - illegal migrants and then legal migrants. Millions of people will be forcibly expelled and borders will be guarded with live ammunition
No doubt I will be accused of wishcasting. This is not that. I have two daughters growing up in the UK and Oz and I dearly want them to grow up in peaceful, racially harmonious societies
I simply don’t believe that’s doable. A brutally violent outcome is now unavoidable (absent the saviour machines). It’s so bleak I generally try not to think about it
Professor David Betz of King's College London believes that we are heading towards ideal conditions for civil conflict:
Moreover, it is not simply that the conditions are present in the West; it is, rather, that the conditions are nearing the ideal. The relative wealth, social stability and related lack of demographic factionalism, plus the perception of the ability of normal politics to solve problems that once made the West seem immune to civil war are now no longer valid. In fact, in each of these categories the direction of pull is towards civil conflict. Increasingly, people perceive this to be the case and their levels of confidence in government would seem to be declining even more in the face of the apparent unwillingness or inability of leaders to confront the situation honestly.
I think we're further away from civil conflict now than we were in the period 2016-19, when the refusal or inability of a large part of the political class to implement the results of the largest vote in the nation's history, which they themselves had called and promised to implement, meant that the legitimacy of our democracy was under serious threat.
And we're considerably further away than we were in the late 1970s, when tens of millions of days were lost to strikes, rubbish was piling high in Leicester Square, the dead were going unburied and Northern Ireland was being, well, Northern Ireland.
But maybe I'm one of nature's optimists.
Sadly I think you are wrong, people here are mostly top 10% the world as it is works for them. There is growing anger and I am not top 10% I mix with these people daily. I think reform will be tried first then when it doesn't work as it wont then it will become civil conflict...the bottom 50% really don't have anything to lose
Here is an example, people here go on about people like nurses having to use a food bank....fair enough then they go on in other posts going lets just add a couple of percent on income tax....yeah well that person on min wage already struggling is going to have 20£ less each month.....2% extra for most here means I will buy a cheaper bottle of wine
The solution to the increasingly stretched and threadbare state is therefore, amongst other things, expressly not to keep jacking up income tax and national insurance, but to end the excessively lenient treatment of assets. That, and to better target benefits and tax breaks on those who really need it.
An older society is a poorer society, but that would be a lot easier to manage if more of the burden was shifted away from work and put onto capital, and if large quantities of tax receipts weren't needlessly squandered. To return to one of my favourite topics, I care about skint old people having enough to eat, but I'm against propping up the spending power of rich old people with taxation and wealth transfers that erode the living standards of poorer, younger ones. The hikes in taxes on work to raise billions to subsidise the booking of cruise holidays by asset millionaire pensioners must be stopped.
Well this awful government has whacked up inheritance tax on farmers, whacked up national insurance on business owners and slashed pensioners winter fuel allowance so some have been frozen this winter let alone going on cruise holidays
The idea pensioners are "freezing to death" because wealthier ones lost a benefit that has been less than their pension goes up each year is laughable and revealing that the attitude is that everyone else should go without so the special interest groups you favour can be kept in the comfort to which they've been accustomed while everyone else has got poorer so they could be protected. Selfishness off the scale.
Pensioners on just state pension and £13k a year ie less than minimum wage, have lost their winter fuel allowance this year and genuinely are at risk of serious illness like pneumonia. Reeves didn't just target millionaire OAPs on cruises.
It isn't selfishness, far from it, Reeves cutting WFA for such low income pensioners was immoral
Don't know where you are getting this nonsense from. There are many, many sources of help for those on low incomes.
Reeves ended winter fuel allowance for every pension not on pension credit, thanks for proving my point
You still don't understand the broad scope of (parliament backed) benefits in this country. There are a number of safety nets and if you want to deny this, I have a lot more examples.
Why are politicians and commentators so outraged by the Vance speech? They are allies of Murica. Their ally Murica has patronised, lectured and openly interfered with other countries for a long long time.
You choose who to be allied with. Seemingly we were fine when Murica messed with other people, but now react with Consternation and Uproar when they do it to us. Nothing has changed!
With due respect, that is a pretty daft comment.
Firstly, not everyone was 'fine' with all of past US foreign policy.
Secondly, when it is directed at you, of course you complain more! Your comment is like saying "Zelensky has no right to be so upset about Russia invading Ukraine, when he wasn't that upset about Russia invading Georgia"
But this is literally America. This is what it does - and we have supported it and allied with it as it does the exact thing it’s now doing to us.
I read the reports about the speech and I’m thinking about people voting for the Leopards Eating Faces party then saying I didn’t think they would eat MY face.
Your analogy is silly. I’m talking about people who SUPPORT the people doing the invading. Not opposing them. When did Ukraine support Russia interfering with other countries?
Right. Let me put it this way. The US was a critical ally for 80 years, primarily against the Soviet Union/Russia. Now that Western Europe is almost at war with Russia, the US is abandoning its allies (who also loyally died alongside America's wars elsewhere), and is instead using speeches to attack them. And your reaction is 'what are people complaining about?'. Sorry, but that is properly nuts, whatever your views on Pinochet or whatever.
Trump abandoning NATO was the Hegseth speech. This is the Vance speech talking about freedom of speech and democracy. His speech is outrageous only because they’re saying it to us - not because of what they are saying. We apparently support them when saying this nonsense to other non-enemy countries. We support them interfering with elections and even deposing leaders to impose dictators like Pinochet. But apparently now are outraged by their views.
The problem for the Cons, is that even if she is a complete dud, to change leader yet again (would be 7 in 9 years), makes them look like an ungovernable rabble.
In this case, no one will notice.
She wasn't ready for prime time and she has been found out.
In my opinion it's the wets again. This is usually the source of most stabby briefings, right wingers tend to be more public, but the real reason I think that is the language used. "Keir is getting better" is very friendly to the Labour leader, using first name terms and complimenting his performance. This person almost seems ready to cross the floor. A more right wing leak might have read "Starmer is dreadful at PMQs but she can't even seem to beat him."
That there's nothing about policy is also suspicious. Just that she needs to "listen to her team". So I think this is likely to be one of the centrist no-marks. Of course it could be Jenrick, who is also known to be pretty devious, but I just don't seem him being the assassin - he would want to keep his own hands clean. At a stretch it could be an ally - but the leak would be more about the challenge from Reform, not how great 'Keir' is at PMQs.
The medium is also telling - The Murdoch press. It's all very Gove. Very the people that engineered Kemi into place to start with.
Despite saying that Kemi wasn't up to it from day 1, I do feel a bit sorry for her now with the Tory backbiting operation in full swing. She's trying to please everyone and pleasing no-one.
Why are politicians and commentators so outraged by the Vance speech? They are allies of Murica. Their ally Murica has patronised, lectured and openly interfered with other countries for a long long time.
You choose who to be allied with. Seemingly we were fine when Murica messed with other people, but now react with Consternation and Uproar when they do it to us. Nothing has changed!
With due respect, that is a pretty daft comment.
Firstly, not everyone was 'fine' with all of past US foreign policy.
Secondly, when it is directed at you, of course you complain more! Your comment is like saying "Zelensky has no right to be so upset about Russia invading Ukraine, when he wasn't that upset about Russia invading Georgia"
But this is literally America. This is what it does - and we have supported it and allied with it as it does the exact thing it’s now doing to us.
I read the reports about the speech and I’m thinking about people voting for the Leopards Eating Faces party then saying I didn’t think they would eat MY face.
Your analogy is silly. I’m talking about people who SUPPORT the people doing the invading. Not opposing them. When did Ukraine support Russia interfering with other countries?
Right. Let me put it this way. The US was a critical ally for 80 years, primarily against the Soviet Union/Russia. Now that Western Europe is almost at war with Russia, the US is abandoning its allies (who also loyally died alongside America's wars elsewhere), and is instead using speeches to attack them. And your reaction is 'what are people complaining about?'. Sorry, but that is properly nuts, whatever your views on Pinochet or whatever.
Trump abandoning NATO was the Hegseth speech. This is the Vance speech talking about freedom of speech and democracy. His speech is outrageous only because they’re saying it to us - not because of what they are saying. We apparently support them when saying this nonsense to other non-enemy countries. We support them interfering with elections and even deposing leaders to impose dictators like Pinochet. But apparently now are outraged by their views.
No, the speech was outrageous because it was ill-informed, disingenuous, full of lies and misrepresentations and was based on the idea that the greatest threat to freedom in Europe wasn't a tyrant who that morning had attacked a nuclear power plant, but not being nice enough to successor parties to the Nazis and inviting them into government.
When someone says things like that, in Munich, it is outrageous, whether or not it's couched in entirely disingenuous terms as "free speech". Which is inverted by people like Vance and Musk as a rhetorical weapon to force people who disagree to bow to their views, while of course doing the opposite and trying to delegitimise or ban things that they disagree with.
It was outrageous both because of what was said, who was saying it, and what we know they support - which very much isn't freedom and democracy.
Good, but it needs to be a sizeable increase. Going to 2.5% or 2.7% or something like that will just hurt the public finances without yielding much increase in capability.
Like many things the government does, it would be prudent to ask what the MOD is actually going to do with the extra cash. An awful lot of taxpayers money currently goes into MOD procurement, often getting spent on what looks more like social security for UK defence contractors and Scottish shipyards than things useful for fighting in an actual hot war. The sagas we get to hear about such as the Ajax APCs (over 8 years late, at least 20% over budget) or the Nimrod upgrades (scrapped £3.5bn into the program) suggest that the procurement is probably the worst bits of the process state in action.
I've very little confidence tipping an extra £60bn a year into this black hole will do much to enhance our fighting capability, although it will probably work wonder for BAE's balance sheet.
One if the advantages of increasing defence spending during a war is that you have a slightly better idea of priorities, and what doesn't work. And we're already halfway through a defence review.
So we'll probably be slightly less inefficient/profligate this time around. Fir example, we might actually buy more than two days worth of munitions for our weapons systems.
Perhaps scrapping the two large aircraft carriers that provide zero defence to the European theatre would be a better use of resources.
Both of you go away, reflect on the (now unclassified) NATO defence plans from the 80s and consider the need to fill in for the (one assumes now absent) US carriers.
Comments
If the government were serious they would be looking to fund as many SOTA GPU clusters at the leading unis as they are all short of H100 availability. Again, they have thrown their lots in with some weird eco data centre start-up who only have £100m in funding but are claiming they can a) make AMD cards do thing AMD themselves can't get to do and b) have billions to spend on new data centres.
On defence spending. Taxes will have to rise if people think the defence capability necessary.
Otherwise the government of the day will just have to do the best they can with the taxes the public will let them raise. There are still choices to be made, better or worse paths to follow, even though I agree with you that a modest amount of extra taxes could go a long way.
This isn't a new problem. Ask Charles I or Cromwell about Parliament's willingness to recognise the fiscal needs of the state and to vote for increased taxation.
You choose who to be allied with. Seemingly we were fine when Murica messed with other people, but now react with Consternation and Uproar when they do it to us. Nothing has changed!
"Gen. Kellogg said US would respond to Russian ceasefire violations with immediate and overwhelming violence, citing Tomahawk strikes on Assad when he used chemical weapons.
Defense Secretary Hegseth said the US will play no role in ceasefire enforcement at this same conference."
https://x.com/igorsushko/status/1890941298296623268
https://www.reuters.com/world/ukraines-senior-officials-discuss-kyivs-peace-vision-with-chinas-foreign-2025-02-15/
What we'll probably get in reality is yet another round of austerity cuts to public services, additional measures to try to frustrate the disabled from claiming benefits, blame rhetoric levelled at the unemployed, and even higher levies on earnings so that assets can be spared (at bare minimum another extension of fiscal drag, and possibly direct income tax hikes if the Treasury gets panicky enough.) In short, continuity Sunak, exactly as I predicted before the election.
You don't think it might be a little concerning?
Firstly, not everyone was 'fine' with all of past US foreign policy.
Secondly, when it is directed at you, of course you complain more! Your comment is like saying "Zelensky has no right to be so upset about Russia invading Ukraine, when he wasn't that upset about Russia invading Georgia"
“How closely related are modern anti-democratic beliefs among white Americans, and to what extent are these beliefs shaped by exclusionary racial attitudes? Using data from the Political Unrest Study, the Collaborative Multiracial Post-Election Survey (CMPS), Democracy Fund + UCLA Nationscape, and the Survey of the Performance of American Elections (SPAE), we find that support for voting restrictions, opposition to voting expansions, belief in widespread voter fraud, and support for overturning democratic election results load onto a single underlying dimension. While the prevalence of anti-democratic beliefs among white Americans has remained stable over the past decade, these beliefs have become increasingly interconnected. Furthermore, racial attitudes towards out-groups—including racial resentment, anti-immigrant sentiment, and white racial grievance—strongly correlate with anti-democratic beliefs, whereas in-group racial attitudes do not. Analysis of multiple waves of the American National Election Studies (ANES) reveals that racial resentment and white grievance now explain twice as much variation in anti-democratic beliefs as they did in 2012. Experimental evidence also demonstrates that white Americans react negatively to voting expansions when the racial implications of these reforms are made explicit. These findings underscore the growing alignment between anti-democratic beliefs and racial attitudes in contemporary U.S. politics.”
As was pointed out on here after Trump was elected - the trade tariffs are likely to push Europe towards China and China towards Europe... This is one of the examples where China is doing the EU a favour in return for something we will discover later..
1 - Shorter term ie tactical. What capabilities do we need, what can actually be done quickly, and how do we get there? How do we collectively (as say the Joint Expeditionary Force) support and protect Ukraine now?
2 - Longer term? How do we deter Russia, and position ourselves to prevent the USA exploiting Ukraine or selling it down the river, in the longer term?
3 - How do we manage our relationship with a (possibly former) ally run by an old career criminal interested only in his personal interests, who mainly listens to the voices in his head, and has a regime gutted of competence?
Trump's 5% is posturing - the USA only spent 2.7% in 2024.
So I suggest more like 2.6% is likely for 24-25, and 2.75-2.8% next year for the UK, which will build on various things that have already been started. A lot of the stuff is relatively inexpensive, such as gingering up personnel who have left, and have a continuing obligation if required.
Each extra 0.1% is around £2.5bn per annum.
There were plenty of proposals of how to raise funds at the budget that were not used. For example from a tweak to the Tax Relief on pension contributions.
a) a non recovering alcoholic
b) one of those weirdos who drinks their own piss
c) someone who has his water specially shipped in by a UK water company
https://x.com/flyingdutchpall/status/1890703304151220281?s=61&t=LYVEHh2mqFy1oUJAdCfe-Q
Hear Ye the grief of man in winter’s chain!
My name is Morris, my name is Dancer
Yet my radiators bleed, and groan in vain,
And all I do is ponder: PB’s famed Entrancer
O Leon! Thee the southern heavens crown,
Where myrtles lean to kiss the yielding tide;
Soft airs attend thee, golden suns look down,
Whilst here in iron bonds I grieve and bide
Would that my feet, unshackled from this fate,
Might dance with nymphets in the sois, the sunlit lane
And shake this bitter frost from out my gait -!
But Leon reigns afar, and I remain
This weekend, the independent publication Schools Week highlighted how some headteachers in primaries, while enthusiastic about the overall aims, were refusing to take part in an “early adopter” pilot scheme for 750 volunteer schools because only 60p was being provided by the government per pupil.
https://www.theguardian.com/education/2025/feb/16/we-cant-feed-pupils-for-60p-say-schools-in-blow-to-labour-breakfast-club-pledge
Edit sorry this was intended in response to @Kamski. You make the same point as I do. Russia and China share the same view on transatlantic alliances.
I read the reports about the speech and I’m thinking about people voting for the Leopards Eating Faces party then saying I didn’t think they would eat MY face.
Your analogy is silly. I’m talking about people who SUPPORT the people doing the invading. Not opposing them. When did Ukraine support Russia interfering with other countries?
China can also see Trump’s geopolitical weakness, which must be heartening.
After a very brief spat with our Russian troll yesterday lunchtime I left you alone for the day. I genuinely went to Penarth for the afternoon. I had a nice coffee (very nice coffee) and a cake at Brod, the Danish bakery (lots of talk of Greenland - they are furious) but forgot to take photos to post later, sorry about that.
Still far too many non-right wingers left on here for you then? There must be, ooh, at least five, so I will bid you farewell and try to leave you alone today too.
Have a nice day. X
https://www.thetimes.com/uk/defence/article/starmer-to-overrule-reeves-and-boost-spending-on-defence-0szz8xp6w
A debate on the enemy within is fairly apposite, when the cornerstone of NATO is threatening to sell out European security.
They were expecting to be browbeaten about defence. They weren’t expecting the true weirdness of what followed.
Since the helicopter pilot was a woman, that may be the identified cause. Hegseth has some very strange views about women in combat.
https://apnews.com/article/pete-hegseth-background-defense-secretary-confirmation-hearing-e160e10c86385a8beff110d9190fb34e
I hope that I am wrong.
As to the actual cause - I'd think perhaps something in the ATC system, either lost communication or what I think is sometimes called "Swiss Cheesing" that is leaving very tight "holes" for people to fly through, increasing risk. That would I think match the 75ft separation quoted.
Canny of Ukraine to cosy up to China. America is increasingly likely to abandon Ukraine and needs must. Cosying up to China potentially adversely impacts Russias arms supply too, so potentially double bubble.
https://www.theguardian.com/world/2025/feb/16/muhsin-hendricks-worlds-first-openly-gay-imam-shot-dead-in-south-africa
Think what you can buy for the military with £90m - how many machine guns, bullets, shells. It’s over 69,000 SA-80 machine guns for example.
All these figures can be used and depending on where you sit, £90m for the army might be better than £90m to Mauritius.
America is determined to go its own way on AI and ostentatiously refuses to even discuss EU style regulation. We find ourselves in a difficult position. On defence we are much more aligned with Europe. After all, we live here. On trade the government is still trying to find a niche where we can be pals with both. I don't blame or criticise them for this, it would be good for the UK if we achieved it, but it is going to be a very difficult path whilst that unpredictable bully is in the Whitehouse.
We need to adjust our defence spending to the new world reality of an expansionist Russia and hostile USA.
NEW THREAD
https://www.gov.uk/cost-living-help-local-council
https://www.thesun.co.uk/news/politics/33399607/kemi-badenoch-tory-leadership/
In my opinion it's the wets again. This is usually the source of most stabby briefings, right wingers tend to be more public, but the real reason I think that is the language used. "Keir is getting better" is very friendly to the Labour leader, using first name terms and complimenting his performance. This person almost seems ready to cross the floor. A more right wing leak might have read "Starmer is dreadful at PMQs but she can't even seem to beat him."
That there's nothing about policy is also suspicious. Just that she needs to "listen to her team". So I think this is likely to be one of the centrist no-marks. Of course it could be Jenrick, who is also known to be pretty devious, but I just don't seem him being the assassin - he would want to keep his own hands clean. At a stretch it could be an ally - but the leak would be more about the challenge from Reform, not how great 'Keir' is at PMQs.
The medium is also telling - The Murdoch press. It's all very Gove. Very the people that engineered Kemi into place to start with.
Despite saying that Kemi wasn't up to it from day 1, I do feel a bit sorry for her now with the Tory backbiting operation in full swing. She's trying to please everyone and pleasing no-one.
When someone says things like that, in Munich, it is outrageous, whether or not it's couched in entirely disingenuous terms as "free speech". Which is inverted by people like Vance and Musk as a rhetorical weapon to force people who disagree to bow to their views, while of course doing the opposite and trying to delegitimise or ban things that they disagree with.
It was outrageous both because of what was said, who was saying it, and what we know they support - which very much isn't freedom and democracy.